Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

When I wake up the next morning, I feel the urge once again to jot down my thoughts, snatching up my journal and scribbling data into them.

Concepts, Essence, Vitality, and Willpower. These four things have cropped up again and again.

Nearly every Alchemical Mana I have discovered deals in concepts, which seem to involve something to do with an object's shape or function.

A large number of Elemental Mana types I have discovered manipulate Elemental Essence, and all of them seem to focus on things like matter and energy.

Carbon and Calcium. Carbonates and Calcates, all of those seem to exude vitality. Either the vitality of the living, of plants and animals, or of the undead, and diseases.

And finally, Willpower. The most inconsistent of the four, it seems to bleed in and out of different mana types at complete random, but despite this, Will, my will, is able to take complete control over mana.

I set down my pencil, summoning up a little glob of magic.

It isn't just commands. Mana doesn't just obey my orders.

'Go over here,' I think, and it flies to one corner of the room.

'Come back to me,' I think, and it returns to my hand.

I gesture, and no thought is needed, only a strong focus and time. The mana bursts into flames, emulating the Ruby mana attunement.

Is that even needed? Do I even need to know what I want, in order for mana to do it?

'Obey Thoth', I think to myself, and the mana shifts, slipping free of my control. No, not quite. It pretends to slip free of my control. It does everything Thoth wants it to do, except for the things that I don't.

Maybe the bird notices as the mana flows into the cage and is absorbed into her, or maybe she doesn't. It doesn't matter, because for all intents and purposes, I was able to simply share my magic. No, again, it isn't quite sharing.

I've merely left it laying in front of Thoth, in the magical sense. If it were a gun, or maybe a phone, it would still be registered under my name. Still functional, and able to be operated by them, but never theirs.

I can tell because I already know that I don't want to lose control over even a bit of my magic. Some intuition, or perhaps a compulsion from my power, seems to constantly hold back from sharing it. I haven't awakened the mana of any other animals, either, despite their potential use as a power source. Dad hasn't read my magic journal, even though it's written in plain English.

Maybe it's something like what a tinker experiences, and it would be pointless for him to look at it, and yet, it seems so obvious to me, so simple.

Mana reacts to form. It reacts to elements. It exudes vitality, and bends to willpower.

But on some level, I think I haven't wanted him to participate in it. I've done all my testing by myself. Everything meticulously recorded, everything meticulously tested.

To give me some semblance of control over it. Predictability.

My power wants it, but do I need it?

I feel like I'm close to something. Something that would bust this whole Mana Attunement System wide open for me.

But for now, I've got little else.

[][Learn] Is there anything else I've learned?
-[][Learn] (Write-in)
-[][Learn] No

I close my book, feeling my power's own supply of magic surge in response. A pool of magic I could draw from whenever I want, far stronger than the magic my own soul produces.

I wonder what the mana my power produces wants. What things are permitted when using this 'gifted' mana.

---

I decided to spend a day hammering out the last bits of the "Final Fantasy" game that Greg let me borrow.

It was pure fantasy. All magic and spells and monsters, most of which only superficially resembled mine.

But that wasn't what kept my attention.

The plot spoke of technology, of civilization and the 'hope' it embodied, targeted by monsters whose only goal was to eradicate it. It played out people who fought to shape their stories.

The game played out scenes of spells, spells that cast thousands of needles at a foe, individually doing little damage, but together being unstoppable, swords made of solid water, dolls that could aid in channeling magic, staves that could do the same.

Tinkertech machines powered by magic, and sports impossible to play without the use of both.

But most importantly, it revolved around Summons. Giant beasts, easily a nightmare straight from biotinker horror stories, but made of pure magic, and controlled from afar, controlled by their patrons, sealed in crystals far away.

Out of everything I saw, that idea stuck with me the most. Could I, through force of will, simply command my magic to behave as a certain creature would? To obey the orders of a particular person, without anything more than their intentions to drive it?

What were the limits? How far away could I "lend" magic to someone else from? Could Thoth in their cage control magic that I was wielding from across the city, if I simply thought, 'Mana, do what Thoth would want you to do'?

As the game's final theme played, closing the end of that particular story, I couldn't help but consider the sad message its ending had.

In the game, they killed their 'Endbringer', but not without cost.

It made me a bit sad, but I supposed that was the point.

When you see your story through to the end... It ends.

And if you want to fight your sorrows, you have to be prepared to face them.

---

I had the game console in a box, and the little disk in its fancy case that Greg apparently bought for all his 'favorite' games. (I was pretty sure that he had maybe two games that weren't on that list)

"Here, I've got your stuff, Greg," I say, holding out the box.


"Oh! You beat it? That was quick! Did you like the part where-" he starts, walking over to me. Before he can finish, however, a hand swipes towards me, smacking the box out of my hands.

A quiet pulse of magic insulated the stuff inside from the worst of it, as it crashed to the ground.

Greg looks aghast down at what he thinks is his potentially busted PlayStation, while I just turn to look at Emma.

"Do you have any idea what you've done, Hebert?" she hisses, stalking up to me with her fists clenched.

"Of course not. While you've been busy sucking up to the second-biggest loser in this damn school, I've had to deal with cleaning up the mess you made," she says, looking as if she's holding herself back from trying to shove me like Sophia might have.

I glare imperiously down at her, before the sternness fades into apathy. Powerless. Weak. Psychotic. Helpless.

Even the research I've done so far tells me at least the broad strokes of why Emma is acting the way she is. Something happened when her family was attacked that started this.

It would be so easy, with my abilities. Maybe something like a combination of Simulated Beryllium and Brain Mana. Just pull the unstable concepts right out of her mind. It might take an hour to attune everything, but it could be done.

Or I could do it right now. Just plant my hand on her forehead for a second. Maybe two. Even if she awoke to magic, she wouldn't have enough time before I was able to find the correct memories. Copy them with magic, and then view them at my leisure. Learn the truth right now, and save myself the trouble.

Take the easy way out.

Instead, I lowered my hand from where it had been twitching upwards, and sigh.

"I'm going to figure out what happened to break you, Emma. Save it for the day I do. Then we can see this through to the end, whatever that may be," I say, pushing her slowly, but firmly away from me.

I had to restrain myself even more, as I could feel my hair blowing a bit in an invisible wind. The Keratin Magic had been affecting gravity, making it look like my hair was blowing around indoors ever so slightly.

Emma, to her credit, doesn't even sputter, too in shock at my words to respond as I turn to Greg, who looks like someone trying not to cry even though they've never really had a reason to practice at it.

I lean down to him. "Look, it'll be fine. The memory card is ok, and I didn't delete your save on it. If anything's broken, I'll see about fixing it, or maybe getting you a new one, alright?" I say, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"You did me a favor, and then I got your stuff dumped on the floor. So I owe you twice as much," I say, grabbing the box and pulling him up out of his pity party.

He just nods a bit. "Yeah, right. You don't have to do that, I-"

I hold up a hand. "Take it home, see if it still works. If it doesn't, I'll figure out a solution. Got it?" I insist.

His pout turns into a dumb grin all too quickly. "Yeah! Alright. Thanks Taylor! Be sure to tell me later what you thought of the game!" he says, running away from the still shellshocked Emma before she can decide to ensure his game really is broken.

My eyes meet with hers, and the moment passes. Madison grabs her by the wrist, nervously implying that she should get the hell away from me.

I don't care. I feel more in control now than I've ever felt before.

---

When I get home, it's back to more testing. I decide to test a few of the more interesting things that had popped into my mind.

One of the obvious tests was, my mana could attune to brains. What did mana attuned to the part of a parahuman's brain responsible for their powers do?


Extracting a bit of mana from my own brain was child's play, and the result was... A Mana Type that my power decided to label as "Eldritch Relay".

Wow, and I thought "Soulshaking Dirge" was a creepy name.

This mana, despite its strange name, was fairly simple. Unless it was held perfectly still, allowed to act without any influence, and totally ceeded to the parahuman it came from and their will, the mana did jack diddly. It contained "thoughts of their power", and, if allowed totally free reign, would act as a relay for their power, whatever that meant.

Whatever it meant, I was now apparently a dangerous trump on top of all the other classifications I'm sure I've had slapped on me in recent months.

I turned to my next text. Combining Construct, Barrier, and Shell magic, and then attuning that to something, had thus far resulted invariably in armor.

Lightsmith Armor came from attuning it to glass, and Woodsmith Armor, by attuning it to wood. The new mana would attempt to forge armor plates from something, and until starved of magic, they would be enchanted with higher durability.

It was worth testing it on other things as well, I felt. With some attunement and hybridization, I gathered a large mass of the magic, and got to work attuning it to whatever caught my fancy.

Attuning it to blood resulted in Bloodsmith Armor, which turned, you guessed it, blood and blood energy into solid armor plates. These armor plates, being made of blood or blood magic, had powerful revitalizing properties. If you were willing to absorb the vitality from blood, anyway...

I didn't fancy the idea of having red skin or eyes or anything, so I moved on to the next.

Attuning it to gold resulted in Sunsmith Armor, which turned sunlight into armor, an armor which both absorbed and radiated the sun's energy.

It wasn't quite like Lightsmith Armor. In the same way, magically, Light and Sunlight were different.

I suspected, given enough power and light, Sunsmith Armor Plates would eventually take on other properties of the sun. I happened to go to fifth-grade science as much as anyone, so I knew that the sun was a bit more impressive than a huge hot dot in the sky. I wonder if its armor could eventually turn into something like plasma...

Next test, and the final one for now, I infused the last of the mana into diamonds, interested in finding out just what sort of horrible biological monstrosity my mana would reward me with using Lifesmith Armor.

Once again, magic defied my expectations, in that respect. This mana made armor, sure, but not a physical one. Instead, it turned Life into Armor. The more vitality the mana absorbed, the more durable its host would become, so long as the magic lasted.

In short, my senses implied that it would allow someone to turn wounding blows into merely weakening ones, no matter how brutal.

The downside was obvious. If you pour all of your life into defense, then there's no life left in you.

A dangerous use of life energy.

I dispersed the magic, jotting down a few ideas for later before moving on.

One quick test I was able to get out of the way, was figuring out what was the minimum that I could wear, to count towards a True Attunement's Set Bonus. Using some cotton and scissors, I was able to quickly find out that... It was arbitrary. Joy.

I needed seven pieces, at minimum. Boots, Gloves, Shirt, Pants, and a hat. I could ditch any of them, but only if I wore something else. The something else could also be a weapon. It didn't matter how little I wore, only that it was my "outermost layer". I discovered that, interestingly enough, my magic didn't care what I was wearing underneath my "set", so long as it didn't somehow breach certain quirky limitations.

Wearing clothing over other clothing? The True Attunement flowed correctly.

Wearing armor over clothing? The armor's set bonus was applied.

Wearing clothing over armor? A new set bonus or none at all, depending on if the two were "integrated" into the same basic "set" of equipment. I wasn't in danger of being deprived of a set bonus for using armored inserts in clothing, but it would give a different one.

Wearing almost nothing? The full set bonus applied, so long as the appropriate places were covered.

Wearing almost nothing with something underneath? The result was an entirely new set bonus or none at all, again, depending on how much they were integrated. Merely wearing some Curestone bracers over a cotton suit didn't push me towards the Curestone's Set Bonus, and it pushed me away from cotton's bonus.

However, wearing curestone plates over my arms and legs, with the stone sewn into the cotton? A new Set Bonus that slightly changed the properties of my Cloth Cantrips, giving them a more healing bend to them.

In short, True Mana fed into what I could only go so far as to call my outward appearance. Lacking imbalance in my outward equipment, True Attuned Mana could flow freely, and unlock the set's hidden magical potential.

Considering the strange qualities of this, I had a suspicion that at higher levels of True Attunement, even the style of an outfit might lend itself towards particular abilities.

I finally decided to test my new costume's bonus as well, something I had been neglecting.

The first thing I noticed, upon donning my armor and unleashing my magic, was that my home had suddenly become strong. As strong as my armor, in fact.

That was the Sage Armor's True Attunement. The wooden object or structure nearest to me shared my armor's strength.

Then, with the strength of my soul, I pulled free the secret cantrips of this attunement and unlocked its set bonus.

Firstly, I could use it to grow plants without soil. I simply applied my magic, and the plants would grow and flourish, even if all I had was a single seed. And unlike before, if I forced a plant to grow using nothing but liquid mana, it wouldn't shrink and wither over time, as the liquid mana faded, and the limited mass of the plant was sucked in on itself.

My armor let me grow plants. And the cantrips were no different.

Mana Blossom, the ability to have my magic manifest in the form of plants I had access to, instead of a Ray, a Liquid, or a Wave. It would simply manifest as... a glowing transparent plant.

Next, Cutting of Sage. My armor's cantrip quite handily granted me the power to duplicate it. Given some time, I could make a perfect spare of my outfit, using nothing but the raw magic of my True Attunement.

Finally, one of the most potentially useful abilities. Once in a while, I could simply pluck a plant out of the ground, and... Leave a duplicate behind. I could clone any herb I could get my hands on, tapping nothing but my Cantrip and the True Mana it drew from.

All in all, a good lesson on True Attunements, I felt.

Next, I turned my attention to Arcane Magic, one of my power's pretty obvious banes.

One thing that had been irking me was my power's vague description of Songstress Secret Stone, and the resulting Vibrato Stone that it could synthesize.

So, I decided to study it. In my house, the electricity humming inside of Songstress Secret Stone was a slow pulsing meloncholy, one that I felt I was missing something important about while trying to experiment and study it.

The Vibrato Stone, however, was far more straightforward. It created a black and silver rock that seemed to only whistle like a flute. Scratching it, tapping it, and even the resonance of making noises at it. It simply turned it all into the notes of a whistle.

I toyed around with it for a while, seeing all the noises it could make, but it was clear that, as a plain old rock with no particular shape, it would be awkward to try and play it like an instrument. I would need to at least turn it into something vaguely instrument shaped, if I wanted to use it like that.


Other than that, I had no other ideas, and set the rocks aside to attend to a few other tests.

I decided to end on an even bigger mystery, bringing out the Bucket of Arcane Sorcery that I kept some water in for Arcane Tests.

Infusing mana into it, I allowed the mana to leak out of the bucket, resulting in a low, incomprehensible whispering.

It sounded like no language I had ever heard before, though, in all fairness, it sounded a bit like multiple languages, all with different cadences.

It sounded somewhat familiar.

On Arcane Mana, and when spoken with no mana, imitating the words had no effect. Thaumic mana, however...

"Glunk", I muttered, picking out one of the words.

The thaumic mana turned into a cylinder, drips of magic dropping out the bottom.

"Tank", I spoke, and the mana twisted into a leaky cup-shape.

Finally, I tried following along, matching the whispering word for word, too fast for my power to properly tell me it's effects.

The mana began to shift and change, it grew shiny, and sprouted handles, liquid magic pooled inside it as it transformed in shape to hold it.

Finally... "Kerkakerkackerckak," I say, making the solidified mana-bucket tumble to the ground.

The words I had been hearing, the conflicting, mixed-language whispers, they had been describing the bucket nearest to it.

My power renamed "Whispers of the Lake", instead, calling it "Ambient Noise".

I tilted my head. "Ambient Noise?" I thought out loud.

I didn't understand. But then, it was getting late, and I was getting tired. Maybe I would understand it better in the morning.

I had a lot of work to do.

---

Playing silly games with grand notions has awakened Taylor to the potential of Will!

---

Final week of May Plans:

[][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[][Daily Activities] Hang out with Greg, instead of merely tolerating his presence.
-[][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)
-[][Daily Activities] Something Else (Write-In)

[][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[][Cape Activities] Go out healing with Panacea even more.
-[][Cape Activities] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Cape Activities] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know the names of the gangsters who did it.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones in prison.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones that escaped.
-[][Cape Activities] Set up your Legal Second-Identity (Write-In Plan)
-[][Cape Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)
-[][Cape Activities] Something Else (Write-In)

[][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[][Project] Greg Veder's Videogame gave you the inspiration to try crafting your own summoned being. You'll try to create a creature of pure mana, and see what happens if you call Thoth's Will to inhabit it in place of your own. With some restrictions, of course.
-[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)
-[][Project] Alchemy consumes your mind. You'll discard a project this week. (If this vote wins, up to ten Write-in [][Alchemy] experiments will be processed this turn instead of one major project.)

[][Alchemy] You have (Seven) Alchemy Tests Remaining.
-[][Alchemy] Write-In.

[][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Phonem's effect (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Study a target for Phomens (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Transmutation (Choose a Synthesis Mana and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Mana] Something Else (Write-In)

---

21 Points of Research Spent. 10 Points of Research Gained.

Stats

Research: 57
A good start.

Overall Health: 14
You're a very small, but not squishy human.

Overall Magical Power: 11
You are a competent Channeler, using raw Willpower and attuned mana to plow your way through problems.
You also dabble in Wizardry as well, to a lesser extent, and your overall magic leans towards Communion, the art of controlling nature, and Biomancy, the art of manipulating Life Vitae.

Abilities

Magical Soul: D
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic. Your resolve to fend off the death of others at any cost has strengthened your soul.

Magical Body: E
Rating: ???
Your body contains some magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.

Magical Power: B
Rating: Trump ???
You are a parahuman with the power to create this anomalous energy known as "Mana", at will. Once per month, you may boost your Magical Power ranking to A for one scene.
Boosted for One Month.

Composition Detection: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to detect the exact composition of materials. So long as you apply mana to them, that is. Fairly Niche.

Eidetic Memory: A
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget what mana attunements you have learned, their applications, and their nuances. You will also never forget any word or noise you test on mana, or the effects it has.