Chapter 402: Late Night Haircut
The room Virella had given Stryg was quite spacious, far larger than the tents he had grown up in or the rooms he had lived in with Feli. The furnishings were sparse, a plain bed with a single blanket, and a bare wooden chair in the corner. Even if this was a room in the Celestial Shrine, it was still the room of an acolyte. Stryg preferred it that way, it reminded him of his days spent training.
It had been a while since he had a room to himself to meditate and improve his mana flow. He sat down on the floor crossed-legged, closed his eyes, and took deep slow breaths. Carefully, he called out to the mana reserves in his heart. Gradually, ten chromatic colors of mana answered in their own tones.
Black and Orange eagerly answered the call first, the two colors he was most accustomed to casting. Then came the familiar Grey, the first chromatic mana he had ever called forth. Reliant Yellow came next, followed by powerful Green, and serene White. Purple was coaxed out from its timid abode. Brown and Red were harder to summon, his ineptitude in half their spell-forms was evident in the colors’ stubbornness. Blue, fickle Blue, answered last; the color demanded stability in his emotions, and yet Blue felt the most volatile of his colors.
Soon the colors were streaming through his veins in a convoluted jumble, distorting his mana flow entirely. Stryg clenched his eyes and furrowed his brow as he tried to calm the colors and their tones as they clamored against one another.
He remembered the words Beatrix Morrigan had told him in their duel back in Undergrowth. The true blue mage had warned him of the unique nature of each mage’s mana equilibrium, each color within a mageborn vying for superiority. Most manifold mages only had to struggle with two or three colors, but a prime mage had to face them all. It felt like a storm brewing within Stryg’s chest, unable to escape, yet unwilling to stop fighting.
Stryg tried remembering Ismene’s lessons on flow control. The more stable a mage’s mana flow, the more powerful their spells could become. It was for that same reason so few prime mages ever managed to reach the adept rank. The ten colors within them would consistently destabilize their mana flow. The body naturally did its best to stabilize the flow, but that would only get him so far. If he wanted to grow stronger, he would have to learn to consciously control his flow.
As usual, the colors fought against him, against each other. Stryg was ready to give up as usual, after the pain within his veins began to burn with a dull ache, but he tried to hold out, just a little longer.
Ismene had once told him that chromatic colors felt different to each mageborn and it was his job to listen to the colors and understand their desires, for the mana was an expression of him, unconscious perhaps, but always a part of him.
Stryg turned his focus onto his heartbeats, the synchronous sounds of his two hearts echoing off one another in a rhythmic song. Despite the violent nature of his colors, he noticed they were reacting to the rhythmic song.