It took a lot of time, but I managed to find an appropriate name for all of the mana. That probably took at least a month, or what felt like a month. It’s weirdly comforting to know that I have all of this time to do anything. Well, anyway.

The orange mana is probably fire mana. Aside from the glaringly obvious flamesque qualities that it manifested, it sparked into a sizable flame when I brought some together. It seemed to use whatever weird energy was inside it to fuel the flame, but it seems to recharge after a while. I have also tried smashing the orbs, but to no avail. It did somewhat shake up the energy inside though, leading to an unstable blazing fire that immediately exhausted the orb.

The next is the blue mana. Unsurprisingly, it’s water. It already felt wet and playing with it resulted in actual wetness, with water somehow spawning within this void. I didn't try to drink the conjured water though, who knows whatever side effects it has because of all that magic business. It definitely isn't because I tried scooping the water and ended up having my hands phase through it, definitely not! Who am I even defending myself against? Anyway, water, blue, easy.

Purple mana was definitely lightning. They almost acted like nodes, with the lightning arcing between them. I did try licking it, and did feel little tingles, the same kind you’d get from licking a 9V battery. Every little thing about them begged them to be labeled as lightning mana. Heck, even the coloring and the way it behaved would be something straight out of the wet dreams of Lord Gilthunder Maximoff Elektra Schneiden, God of the Chuunis, Master of Delusions. Not that I would know, never really had that phase as a teenager. I was much too focused on studies, not that it helped much in the way of socializing…welp, that just put a slight damper on my mood. Moving on then. 

Yellow mana was most likely wind mana. It would blow and gust and whatever wind does when I held it in my palm. Licking it felt like sticking your tongue out during a particularly breezy day. Grouping them together would gradually amp up the wind, and eventually it spawned a tornado about as tall as I was, which wasn’t much. Damn it, why am I so short. Cough. Smashing two of the mana together resulted in a blast of air in all directions, like uncapping a plastic battle that was wound tight. Although I must say, the choice of color is a bit odd. Why would it be yellow? Yellow doesn’t really say wind. Did the wind mana draw the short stick and had to make do with the leftovers? Poor guy.

The green mana took me a bit longer, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s earth mana, and no, the loam soil smell wasn’t enough to confirm it, I had to make sure. It tasted like, you guessed it, dirt. Shaking it around did nothing. It was only when it was together with other earth mana did it do anything interesting. Arranging the mana into a rough shape caused them to spawn dirt that hardened into the general shape outlined by the balls. It feels like I should be able to change the type of earth that it’s covered by, but I’ll look into that later.

The white mana would be light mana. I know, I know, impeccable naming if I do say so myself. It shined a lot like a thousand watt flashlight. Just throwing out luminescence with reckless abandon every which way. More together made it even brighter, how that’s possible is a mystery. What’s cool though is that arranging some into a line focuses the lights into a beam, kinda like a laser, though it would be nice to know exactly how powerful it is. 

The black mana is dark mana. It acted a lot like the light mana, but with darkness. Where the light mana emitted light, the dark mana consumed it. More resulted in an even blacker black. It was like gazing into the abyss, although I guess I already am in a kind of abyss. Like I observed earlier, it had some weird sort of polarity thing going on with the light mana. 

I tried the same thing again, but with more of both mana. I scooped up a bunch of mana with my arms, dark on the left and light on the right, and slowly brought them together. Suffice to say, the pressure this time was significantly more intense. It was like trying to close an overstuffed suitcase. However, the moment the threshold was crossed, the two groups rapidly flew and adhered, extinguishing them in the process. What I did not anticipate was that at almost the same time the mana lost color, an explosion propagated from the point where the mana collided. It was like a pressure cooker prematurely opened. The blast knocked me a good few meters away. It even threw my meticulously arranged mana into disarray. 

Hoo boy, that could’ve gone worse. I should probably get the hint and be more careful with fusing the two together. Though I must say, that has got to be one heck of an interesting reaction. 

After picking up the scattered mana and putting them all back in place, I look towards the uncolored mana. 

Now these ones were harder to categorize, but at least they had unique characteristics I could distinguish.