The rest of Klaarson’s team whip around, knives out, when their friend collapses to the ground and thrashes about, shrieking in agony at my feet

  “What are you doing?” Trevour demands.

  Marta recovers from her shock a heartbeat after Trevour, and she advances on me when she sees my hand outstretched toward Klaarson. “Hey! Leave him alone!”

  Club just stares, his eyes narrowed to slit as he studies me coolly. He looks like he’s taking my measure and weighing the consequences of attacking. I’ll bet he’s finding a hundred ways to kill me in his mind.

  “I’m fixing his core, but it’s a delicate task. Stand down,” I command, copying Nicanor’s tone. Infusing my burgeoning authority into my words works, though their fear and suspicion echo through my Domain.

  All the same, the three of them retreat. They sit on a few rocks they’d picked out as seats previously, watching my every movement without further interruption. Their silence is far from empty.

  Wariness still billows out from them, and they don’t put their knives away, but I find that I respect them for it. They care about each other.

  The thought passes by in a flash, and then I discard it and turn to the work in front of me. I narrow down the focus of my world, ignoring outside distractions and focusing on the task I’ve begun. I understand their concern, but they’ll just have to trust me, even if they don’t know me all that well yet.

  I wield my mana scalpel with precision, cutting into Klaarson’s core in the exact spots I noticed his connected channels before they disappeared. It’s obvious to me now why they hid; he was subconsciously preventing anyone from taking his mana by phasing them into the metaphysical realm entirely. I didn’t even know that was possible.

  Staunch determination pulses pff Klaarson, along with a heavy sense of guilt. Through my Domain I sense his heartbreaking split in priorities and his sense of rightness. He wants to grow for himself, even though it’s a common arrangement for a mentor to draw on an assistant who’s still learning.

  At least this way I will give him the tools to make the choice for himself, each day, and not lock himself into a lifetime of regret. It’s still a daunting challenge. I can’t mess up.

  Working on someone’s soul from memory would be disastrous before my [Glass Mage] merged Class. Upgrading allowed me to tap into the superior mental processing and memory of a [Mage], though it’s taken me a while to realize how massive the mental boost truly is.

  [Mages] really are cheaters, if I’m honest.

  In my mind’s eye, I recreate an exact replica of Klaarson’s core, overlaying it across his actual core space. With the image superimposed, I know precisely where to make incisions. It’s still scary, since a tiny slip could cut the wrong thing, rendering him crippled for life.

  Or dead.

  I swallow hard and ignore that fear.

  Once I finish each cut, piercing through the “blockages" that Klaarson has erected in his soul, I gently reach out and connect to his core, right where his channels should be, with slender threads of the purest mana I can call forth from my own core.

  Introducing foreign mana is still going to burn like the abyss, but cleaning it beforehand is the best I can do for the poor man. Now that I’ve lanced the core, I have to drain it, just like a [Doctor] clearing an infected growth of pus.

  Apologizing mentally for the pain I’m about to inflict on Klaarson, I pump mana through his core and channels, clearing out the calcified energy building up like mineral deposits in his channels and using my Domain to guide it to the surface. Manually venting mana is never quick, and forcing someone else’s mana out is even slower.

  I’m like a magical [Plumber] now, flushing a water heating tank with built-up deposits. Perhaps the more accurate analogy is clearing out a backed-up sewage line.

  Curdled gunk pours out, smelling foul to my mana senses, and I almost lose my tenuous connection based on my reflexive desire to get away from the odious excrement. I clamp down on the instinct to vomit and keep going.

  Ugh! Sewer line it is.

  Shuddering, I press onward anyway, scouring each channel as thoroughly as I can while still maintaining a delicate touch. I don’t want the raw pain to kill him, after all. But some of his channels are clogged more than others, full of twisted and decaying buildup, and I have to exert more force to scour them clean.

  I lose track of time, especially since I’m leaning into my growing understanding of temporal runes to try to accelerate the purge. I don’t feel right letting him suffer anymore than necessary, but it’s not a quick process.

  Once I’m satisfied that Klaarson is at least back in a functional state, I consider how to navigate the next part successfully. If I leave him like he is, chances are good that he’ll just get right back into a convoluted state. He needs time and clarity to resolve this dilemma.

  Melidandri’s dramatic demonstration of temporarily imbuing the air itself with a concept left an indelible imprint on my mind, and it forms the basis for my next step. I know that strictly speaking I don’t need glass in order to imbue, not anymore, but I’ve still never tried to create a permanent working out of pure mana like this before.

  Only one way to find out if it will work. I call up the most richly detailed image of home and belonging that I can summon, ignoring the fluttering ache in my own heart when I realize I’m imagining my childhood home with Mikko, and wishing I could return to my family sooner.

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  I keep at the imagined vista I’m painting, adding details: the knot on the third floorboard from my bed that always creaks when I get up in the morning, the warm luster of the wooden banister, polished smooth by years of sliding down the railing despite repeated scoldings, and the pale spot on the wall in the entryway where the sunlight has started to cause the sky blue paint to fade.

  Capturing the essence of a smell is difficult in an image, but I imagine the sweet rolls my mother baked coming out of the oven, little curls of steam rising from the perfectly flaky golden crust, and my mouth starts to water.

  I continue onward, feathering a thousand more little details into the image with my mental paint brush, and finally I’m done. My home is finished, complete with the herb garden and even the training grounds in the back where the Iron Lunk looms.

  Smiling proudly, I offer it up to the mana around us. I keep a firm grip on the tinge of melancholy I feel, careful not to let it color the image.

  To my immense relief, it takes hold.

  A pseudo core forms out of mana itself, swelling rapidly in size until it fills up the space within Klaarson’s real core. As the mana condenses, I tense, fearing it might dissipate, but the energy remains in place, rotating rapidly.

  Exultation streaks through me. I trace the connections from his actual core to his Skills, now that I can abruptly perform a full Viewing again. Seeing what I’m doing makes an absolutely huge difference. Instead of leaving the naturally-occuring connections in place, I weave tiny threads of the new mana into the grooves in his Skill structures that allow energy to flow into the runes and thus activate the Skill.

  They latch onto each other eagerly, forming a bond that reminds me of [Glass Animation] in the way it pulses with life and shared desires. Coaxing more clean mana to fill up the pseudo core, I push it toward Klaarson’s channels, sending the streams of energy into the raw network that runs throughout his body and connects him to the metaphysical realm.

  With a groan I fall out of the liminal space at last, but our work isn’t finished. He needs to take over, or else everything will be for naught.

  “Klaarson! Focus!” I yell, grabbing his shoulders in the real world and trying to cut past the tears and shuddering breaths that are bending the big man in half with their intensity.

  Despite his anguish, I know I can’t stop now, or the entire mana network will be ruined.

  “Hey, listen,” I say, straightening him up and locking eyes with him. “You gotta force fresh mana through your channels before the pressure gets worse. Forge a new command structure apart from your previous Class.”

  “How!” he howls.

  “Encourage the energy to flow,” I tell him. “Imagine streams of cool water bringing relief to a desert. Each droplet of mana is precious; don’t waste it. Let it soak into you and soothe away your discomfort.”

  His teeth chatter together as he tries to follow. His pain and disorientation is obvious, but I keep talking, coaching him through the process until he clumsily takes over and rotates his mana through his freshly cleaned channels.

  Agony is writ large on his face, but he doesn’t stop, seeming to catch the significance of the working we’re doing together. Bit by bit, he takes over the energy flows, until I finally release my mana manipulation and take a measured step backward.

  “Good. You’re doing it!” I praise him. “Don’t give up. Stopping now means more than just failure. The rush of mana might catch in your channels and build up too much pressure if it has nowhere to go, which could lead to ruptures.”

  He shudders at that, and I don’t blame him. It doesn’t exactly take an advanced degree in metaphysical scholarship to understand how bad a rupture could be.

  How I lived is still a mystery to me. By all rights, I should be dead, my body consumed by the wild Rift.

  I shiver, pushing away the dark memories. A quick and painless death would be the best case scenario if he ruptures, since we don’t have any healers on hand to stitch him back up. Most likely, he would die thrashing on the ground in excruciating pain while his teammates look on in horror.

  I’d rather not have to restrain them until they no longer want to kill me, since I’d hardly blame them for their grief and rage. That could get ugly fast.

  To my very great relief, Klaarson seems to get the hang of mana circulation after a little while, though the energy flows slowly, in fits and starts.

  I nod in encouragement. “That’s it! Well done. Avoid your Class structure for now. We don’t want you to end up back in such a wretched state again. You have to naturalize the mana and truly make it his own.”

  He grunts but listens to my advice as I walk him through each step, doing his best to follow my directions despite his lack of context. I try not to get bogged down by the more technical components of distributed metaphysical mana infrastructure, but the topic is too complex to quickly summarize.

  Somehow, we get through the hardest part together. When he finishes at last, the pain starts to subside, and he breathes a little easier. A strained smile appears on his face.

  “Am I . . . am I better now?”

  “You’ve taken a first step toward healing,” I say cautiously, not wanting to overpromise. “This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I know from experience that the pain will never fully go away until your channels are completely healed.”

  He grits his teeth. “When will that be?”

  “No idea, but it shouldn’t take as long for you as it took me. A few months, probably.”

  “Weeks, if you’re lucky!” I hastily add when he groans.

  “The good news is that if everything goes perfectly, you might be able to use your Skills again without debilitating pain. Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Not hearing a lot of confidence,” he shoots back. I take it as a good omen that he’s making a joke rather than complaining.

  “Excellent sign. Humor is medicine!”

  “I’ll show you humor,” he mutters darkly.

  I take a step back, just in case he’s serious, but he just leans back against a cliff wall with a heavy grunt

  I float over the glass knife with a deft touch of my Domain. “I think you dropped this.”

  He manages a pained chuckle, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the imbued weapon. “Probably shouldn’t have thrown this at you.”

  “Aha! You admit you were trying to kill me, you knave!” I say, pointing at him with an affronted expression.

  My over the top joke seems to fall flat, so I drop the goofy act. Lionel is way better at bedside manners. Instead, I point toward the stone wall behind him and make a slashing gesture with my hand. “Use that as target practice.”

  His lips twist into a grimace that’s half determination and half pain. Klaarson takes a few steps back, shifts his grip on the hilt, and pours mana into the knife. He laughs in pure shock at bypassing his self-imposed blockage, but loses concentration and can’t maintain the connection to the heat lurking within the weapon.

  Before his face can fall at his perceived failure, I pump my fist in the air and shout loudly for everyone to come watch him use mana again.

  He shoots me a terrified look. “But I can’t. Nothing happened! I’m still a failure.”

  “No, my friend,” I reply as confidently as I can. “You succeeded. Far beyond your wildest dreams. My finest experiment, if I do say so myself.”

  “What do you mean ‘experiment?’ You promised it was a proven method,” he growls, his brows pulling down into a tight scowl.

  “Er, yes. The theory behind my experiment is extremely well established.”

  I yelp and dodge the burst of flames that he hurls my way as he slashes the knife in the air between us. His eyes go wide and he stutters an apology, clearly surprised it actually worked this time, but I just laugh and wave him off.

  Huh. Maybe using me as a target was the key all along. All he had to do was tap into one of the greatest motivators any of my acquaintances have ever found: annoyance at yet another one of my crazy schemes.