I’d put her in a bad position. If he’d gone this far out of his way just to get the standing necessary to ask her to a dance, saying “no” to him would be devastating. Which meant that I’d just put a bunch of pressure on Sera, without even considering how she felt about the situation.
I turned my head away. “Okay. You’re right. I made a decision that impacts you without even thinking about it. I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. From this point on, I’ll talk to you about any other house-related matters before I make any decisions.”
“House-related or anything pertaining directly to me, Corin.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I just... didn’t want to ruin the surprise of him asking you. You know?”
“I understand, Corin. If he was just asking for advice from a friend, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to tell me about that. But for what it’s worth? You don’t know a thing about my love life. You’ve never asked. And, as it happens, I already have a date for that dance.”
“...Oh.”
She folded her arms. “And now, you get to share in my awkwardness. Assuming Patrick ever gets up the resolve to ask.”
And that was how I learned to never interfere in the relationships of my friends.
***
It was about twenty more minutes before we’d finally finished talking things out and gotten to a point where she was willing to talk to me about business again.
I pointed at the list. “Okay, first item. Mana storage device.”
She sat down on the floor, and I sat across from her, the paper between us. “Yeah. Seems rather obvious - running out of mana is a common problem, so I could use something that would help me refill my supply.”
“I figured that was your plan. Unfortunately, that particular route won’t work.”
She twisted her lips. “Why not? It sounds like a simple enchantment.”
“It is. It would, however, also probably kill you.”
“What?”
I chuckled. “A little hyperbole, maybe. So, when I enchant something, the item basically has my mana signature on it. Even if you store mana in it, that mana is getting exposed to my mana that’s in the device all the time. And mana belonging to other people is generally toxic.”
“Even for siblings? Wouldn’t we have similar mana?”
I...hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe? I don’t actually know how dangerous that would be... probably less than it would be for strangers, yeah. We probably do have similar types of mana. But I don’t know how far that goes. I’ve never heard of anyone sharing mana.”
And, while I wasn’t going to say it out loud — she’d just finally started to forgive me for my blunder with Patrick — I wasn’t actually certain we were siblings. Half-siblings seemed more likely, if even that. Knowing my father, this whole “legitimizing” her could have been a political game of some kind.
Could I determine that through magic?
Almost definitely, I decided.
I imagined magical paternity tests were probably routine for cases where people were accused of infidelity, and someone had probably come up with a way to test people further removed for bloodline connections. Like to determine if someone was from a royal line, for instance.
I’d have to look into that at some point.
“Okay, so it’d be a risk. How hard would it be to try it with just a small amount of mana?
I scratched my chin. “I don’t actually think you could use a storage device even if I made one, unless you have a spell to pull mana out of things. Shapers can do that, and I think more advanced Enchanters might be able to, but I don’t think it’s a standard thing for all attunements.”
“Oh. I guess I was just picturing something where I push on a rune and it starts sending mana into me until I push the rune again?”
I shook my head. “Your skin would block it. We’re all naturally resistant to mana getting into our bodies from outside sources. It’s not a simple process to force mana into someone. That’s part of why you see so many offensive spells that focus on throwing projectiles — or making an attack explode right in front of someone — rather than, say, making a fireball inside someone’s body. Even if you made physical contact, which would make it somewhat easier, you’d have to force your mana through the body’s natural insulation.”
She stared at the page, looking contemplative. “Huh.”
I don’t think I’d ever managed to stymy her so thoroughly before. Nice.
“Wait, what about how Derek’s monster helped recharge my mana during the Survival Match?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know a lot about how monsters work, honestly. I assume it had some way of purifying the mana to make it safe, then it probably had to force a lot of mana into you to get through your skin. I can’t make an item that does that at my level of skill.”
She seemed to accept that answer, but I decided I’d have to look into it more at some point. Mana recharging charging items could be useful. In the meantime, I had an alternate suggestion. “If I had mana in an item and put in a rune to eject it into the air, would you be able to reshape it into a spell?”
Sera frowned. “Don’t think so. If it was ice mana, maybe I could make an attack out of it? But doesn’t mana dissipate quickly in the air?”
“Yeah, it’d be inefficient. You’d probably lose a lot of mana that way. Don’t know another way to make a storage device you could use, though.”
We sat for a minute in silence.
“What about something that just added more mana into a spell I’m casting?”
“Maybe?” I considered the idea. How would that work? “I don’t know enough about how your spells work to answer that, honestly. I pretty much just shove mana at things.”
“So, my incantations determine the spell that I’m casting. Different incantation? Different spell. Except there are these things called ‘shaping lines’. They’re extra lines I can add to an incantation to change the way it works, with an extra cost. When I finish the spell, my attunement draws the necessary mana out of me, and the spell happens.”
I nodded. “Do you guide your attunement toward which parts of the body it draws from?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“How?”