Bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet, stretching out some soreness from repeatedly being knocked to the ground by my erstwhile sparring partner, I look into the woods where the fairy was escaping into, “So, what was she getting at, anyways?”
Ayre chokes a little, and tries to clear her throat. It seems odd but I shrug. She and Lilly act strange about all kinds of things I don’t understand, so I try to not take it personally. After a pause, she says, “Wait, is that a serious question?” I nod and she blanches, “She was…hmm… So, you remember how I mentioned she wanted me to fall in love with a knight or prince or whatever?” I nod again as she seems to struggle for words. “Well, she thought that you and I might be getting to the next bit that comes in those stories.”
“So from love to…sparring?” Ayre squirms in place before hefting her spear and starting to walk off in the direction of her cabin, pointedly looking away from me.
“We’ll talk about it later. I have some books on the subject that could help.” I watch her walk away, getting the distinct feeling I’m watching a retreat—not just someone walking home. After a few attempts and failures to suss out an explanation myself with my memories, borrowed or otherwise, I follow.
Along the way, I try to analyze the bouts. Ayre is fast, can jump quite high and far, and has reach on me thanks to using that spear. Meanwhile, I am having to fight with what feels like my dominant hand behind my back. “I’ll need to come up with a way to close gaps faster and ways to protect myself while doing so…” I think back to that first time I lost control, and the memory comes with perfect clarity, both from my perspective and that of the elks. The memory has such completeness that I have to slow down. Remembering it almost feels like reliving it at an accelerated pace.
Ironhide Elk
Bestia, Mineralis
Fortified Body, Resilience
A beast known for having a Mineralis enhanced hide and antlers due to its diet that is rich in Ironbark root shoots.
Its essence can be used to improve one's general physical resilience, but will slow the user considerably.
I slow to a stop, concentrating on the memory and the experience. Ayre told me about how she shapes essence through breathing patterns, but I wasn’t able to do it, even with active guidance. “Try to imagine your lungs filling with air, but instead of air, focus on the power in the surrounding air. Draw it in.” And despite an hour of trying, she said I never once moved even one mote of essence, as near as she could tell. She said I didn’t even have somewhere to store it. I lack an essentia vessel, which she says shouldn’t be possible. All mortals, or “kyn” as she refers to them(Or…us, I guess, since I’m ostensibly in that group), have a vessel that is effectively your soul and the way you interface with essence and magic.
Of course, “Shouldn’t” clearly doesn’t mean “can’t”!
I feel my mood starting to nose-dive, so I try to shake off that failure and add it to the pile of others. Instead, I focus on those memories. Seeing through the deer’s eyes in its last moments. The running, the piercing pain as the darts struck home and began solidifying within its veins. “It tried to do something. But what?” I feel it pushing on something. It has a storage of essence in its body that I absorbed, over its heart. When I went to absorb it, I felt something under my hand, like its skin was becoming more dense, maybe?
Closing my eyes hard and remembering its final few moments as it tried to protect itself. It reached within and found power and grasped it. I imagine my body the same way, with the change of trying to follow this essence’s path into my arm. After a few moments, I think I can “see” it. A steel gray bundle of dense essence that feels familiar. I reach for it, wrapping my…something around it. When I make contact, I feel the elk’s memories retreat away quickly. The last few memories of it conjuring its defenses jump into my mind and I know what to do.
I extend my right arm, and flip my palm up. As I watch, that gray essence coalesces in my palm. Staring at it as it twirls and whirls, looking like a pool of liquid iron with motes of rust within. I feel my breath coming more and more shallowly, feeling more exertion in these few moments than through the hour of sparring with Ayre. In a slow, deliberate, motion, I move my hand to my torso and gently press that steel pool into my body. It passes my clothes easily, but I feel considerable resistance when it touches skin. I push harder and harder, willing with my mind just as well as pressing with my arm.
Eventually, something snaps and gives. The essentia disappears near instantly, and I feel…good. I focus on that sensation, holding on to it, willing it into something useful. Something shaped by memories that are mine but not mine. That essence spreads through the rest of my body, distributing itself evenly, and I feel my skin grow more rigid. I hear the ground beneath me giving way, allowing me to sink into the soil an inch or so deeper. My weight is growing, and I feel more durable, and looking closer, I see my skin is taking on a metallic tinge—everywhere but my right arm, it remains as it always does.
Fortified Body
[Mineralis]
[Greatly increase the user's durability and weight over time at the expense of alacrity]
I take a step and realize it’s hard—like I’m trying to walk with boulders tied to my feet. Each step, though, gets a bit easier, until after a dozen steps I feel confident enough to jog and then run. I’m definitely moving slower than I normally would, but I feel unstoppable. All up until the moment I trip on a stump because I try to leap but only make it a few inches off the ground, clipping my ankle and driving myself into the ground with a heavy thud that shakes the nearby trees and echoes through the woods with a dull whump.
I lay there for a few moments, grasping that I’m about two inches into the ground and have left an actual outline of myself in the soil. I stare as I try to get my arm underneath me to lever myself up, but no matter how hard I try, I struggle to get higher than my knees.
“Allanius, you okay? I heard a bang, sounded like a tree fell.” Ayre arrives nearby at a dead run, coming up and slowing. She stares at me, clearly unable to stand despite great effort. “What…happened? Why is your skin like that?”
I lift the hand I’m bracing myself on without thinking to shrug, and promptly fall over, making another new, deeper, outline over and through the existing one.” Not sure, at least, not for certain.” My voice comes out slower and deeper with a metallic tinge initially, but with a bit of effort I speed it up to normal. “I tried to do something and whatever it was, it worked. Maybe too well.” My voice is all over the place, sounding like I’m speaking into a bell with an almost ringing metallic echo. “Can you help me up? I don’t think I can do it by myself right now.”
Ayre trots over to my left side and grabs under my arm, and heaves at the same time I try to push myself up. After a few seconds of effort, I’m stably on my feet, legs planted wider than normal with my back to a nearby tree. It creaks when I lean on it, but does stay upright.
“Logically, you’re infused with metal essence. I’ve seen the elk around here do something similar when forced to fight back. Makes them absurdly tough, but quite a bit slower.” She looks around, contemplative, “How did you do that? Not even a day ago you couldn’t even sense essence on the air, now you’re casting a complex bodily enhancement with a compound essence?”
I explain the memory in loose detail from both sides, realizing that it’s becoming hazy about halfway through. Up to when I realized how the elk tried to protect itself and that I tried to mimic it. “Well, holding on to that much essence without practice will typically poison someone. But you don’t seem any worse for wear in that regard. How bizarre. Can you…stop?”
“Not sure if I know how. I can try…” I focus on the sensation running through my body. That weight that’s underpinning everything I do. I see it in my mind's eye as almost a layer of armor under my skin, spread thinly and evenly. With some effort, I try to unseat it. As I “break” each part of the spell, it is drawn away, through my body, and into my right arm, where it seems to just disappear. Breaking into ever smaller and smaller pieces until they’re gone entirely.
After some amount of time, I refocus my eyes and try to lift my leg, doing so with ease. I look at Ayre and nod. “Think that did it!”
She looks me up and down, going so far as to reach over and squeeze my left arm. “Yeah, seems you dissipated it, but there was no dispersal. Which means you should still have all of that loose essentia in your body, still carrying the risk of poisoning.” She states matter-of-factly.
I shake my head, “Nah, I don’t think so. I felt it get absorbed into my arm,” I lift my right arm and gesture to it. “The essence raced through my veins to get there, and when it did, it just…kinda…disappeared?” Ayre gets a hard look, “What?”
“You can’t ‘disappear’ essence. It’ll dilute into the air until it’s functionally invisible, even compound essences will do so—it just takes longer.” Ayre crosses one arm across her chest, bracing the other one and tapping a claw to the scales on the side of her head. “Maybe your arm just has incredibly dense essentia storage. I’ve heard of enchanters storing essence in solid form, and your arm is basically a crystal. Maybe it just converted the essence into that material?”
She goes on, mostly talking to herself for a little while, but I focus my energies inwards, to make sense of what Ayre is saying. She means well, but half of what she says is gibberish to me, and I don’t want to constantly stop and ask for explanations. So I’ve just been trying to make my own connections as best I can. Thinking on the process from start to finish, I realize and say aloud without meaning to. “I don’t…remember…” I feel a frown sliding across my face.
“What do you mean?”
“How I did it. I remember dispersing the effect clearly, I think that part will be easy now that I understand it. But I can’t remember how I actually made it happen.” I pause, wracking my brain, but only manage to pull up disconnected, fragmentary, pieces.
Inhi E k
B ia, M lis
F i d B y, R ie e
A beast kn n for having a M alis enhanced h and a ers due to its d that is rich in Ironb roo sho.
Its es e can be used to impr one's general ph cal resi ce, but will sl the u r consi bly.
I feel that same feeling I felt at the well. Something I know I should know, but can’t really form a complete thought about. It’s all jumbled and makes no sense.
“Hey, Allanius, you okay?” Ayre waves a hand in front of me, and I realize I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there staring. I shake my head.
“Probably not, if I’m being honest.” I feel a very glum expression cross my face. “It seems I can still lose more memories. Isn’t that exciting?” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my words as I continue. “I did something to make that effect happen. I remember how the effect felt and what it did, but not where the information came from. Now everything surrounding it is fuzzy, aside from the feeling that I should know.” My emotions start to coil around my throat and squeeze like a constricting snake, trying to choke the life out of me — and succeeding. It’s stifling and makes it hard to breathe. “Ayre, maybe I should just leave. What if I forget who you are? What if I forget those feelings that make me want to not give in to this thing? I’m a liability, and I don’t see that changing for the better anytime soon. I’m ju-” Not paying any attention outside my own head, I am not remotely prepared when Ayre hauls back and slugs me across the face with a mighty and very painful THWAP. The scales on her knuckles leave behind actual imprints from the blow.
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“Breath Divine, you are hopeless. Think logically for a second, you moody man. You’ve forgotten nothing else in the last few days. No random losses of memory or ideas. You did lose a memory when trying something new that you’d never done before.” She pauses, taking in a breath and nursing her knuckles before continuing, “So, you have no logical reason to think you can just randomly lose what you already have. You lose memory of a spell, specifically and in a targeted way, after you used it. That’s workable.”
“Yeah, but what if I-” She abruptly shoves me.
“What if you just wander off into the woods and leave? What happens then? Are you going to learn anything? A better way to control this? How would that help anything?” I see a flush of red coming to her face as her normally soft eyes narrow in focus, “I’ll answer for you. It wouldn’t. You're being a greater risk on your own than you are here with someone else to keep an eye on you.”
Seeing her conviction, I struggle to form words because I can’t really argue against her points. “Alright. You make a good argument. Sorry, it’s just that this is all a lot to deal with, and I feel like I’m just not equipped to do so.”
“Let’s go back to my place and talk. Lilly is far better at magic than me and may have unique insights into the situation. Meanwhile, don’t apologize.” She jams a knuckle into the center of my chest, having bent the claw down to not stab me, “I very much doubt that you asked for any of this to fall on your shoulders. Nobody ever does, but some people just have to live with the aftermath and do their best,” The words sound final, deeply personal, and she punctuates them with a turn. After she takes a few steps, she gestures back at me over her shoulder for me to follow. Obediently, I do so, and we make our way back, always keeping in mind to keep her on my left side as we walk.
After a while of walking, we’re back in Ayre’s cabin, with the sun starting to fall lower in the sky. The clearing for her cabin has seen some notable changes now that both of us are up and about, with Ayre tasking me around to help her with various things that an extra hand would help with. It’s led to the crops being fully gathered and processed, her roof being reseeded, the door rehung, and even some digging under the main floor of her cabin for making a cellar. The work has been nice. It feels natural, like they’re things I’ve done before and have muscle memory for. Because of that, it’s been doing wonders for my mindset overall — having things I *can* do despite this disability.
The inside has changed a little bit in the last week as well — namely, with Ayre making space on the floor in the corner of the cabin for me to assemble something of a bed out of loose blankets, and the now present door in the doorway. Lilly is strutting around the table, Ayre is sitting in her hand-made chair, and I am sitting on a…chair that I cobbled together with a couple of loose scraps of stacked wood that Ayre had sitting around. It’s about as comfortable as Ayre’s own chair as far as I’m concerned, but those words will never pass my lips.
“So, you’re saying he got extra amnesia when he manifested a spell? That doesn’t seem right.” Stating the obvious, Lilly twirls a couple of times before sitting down dramatically on a cork. “What do you remember about what you don’t remember?”
The question confuses me for a moment, which is a fairly normal occurrence around Lilly, but I try to think about it anyways.
In k
ia, s
y, R
An n for M ad h and a s d that is ri.
In be usral pe, but will si bly.
“It’s very hazy. It’s…like I can feel the idea of what the thing is in my head. I know it had something to do with an animal that I…absorbed,” I grimace, still not finding a good way to communicate that concept in a way that doesn’t sound just horrifying. “But I can’t remember what it was, or what it was related to, other than the effect of armoring my skin like Ayre saw.”
Ayre snaps her fingers, a noise that is immediately followed with a clack of her elongated claw-like nails, “Well, hardened skin and an animal in this region is pretty straightforward. It’s from an Ironhide Elk. Their skin hardens in response to physical trauma. Makes hunting them pretty difficult unless you can drop it cleanly in one go. They slow down a lot when it happens, but getting through their skin afterwards is damn-near impossible. If they get up to speed while like that, though, they can do serious damage. I’ve watched one get away and after building up speed it just kind of…went through a tree. They eat a lot of Ironbark root shoots.”
Ironhide Elk
Bestia, Mineralis
Fortified Body, Resilience
A beast known for having a Mineralis enhanced hide and antlers due to its diet that is rich in Ironbark root shoots.
Its essence can be used to improve one's general physical resilience, but will slow the user considerably.
Ayre continues listing the qualities of the animal, and with every piece of information, I start to feel my memory trickling back. The hunt from both sides, the kill from both sides, and…the spell. “Can I do it again?” I reach into that same place and can feel more essence coalescing there— the same indistinct metallic gray pool as before, though notably smaller. Without thinking further, I raise my right arm and clench my fist. Where before it felt easy—like there was a pool of power devoted to that specific ability—now it feels like I’m breaking something down to prepare power for the effort. When I open my hand slowly, I see the pool bubbling up from my skin to hover just above it.
I hear a pair of sudden gasps and snap my head up, seeing Lilly and Ayre both staring at me wide-eyed. No…not quite at me. They’re staring at the essence. Ayre breaks her stupor first, “How…are you doing that? That’s Mineralis essence, I’m guessing. Not even twelve hours ago you couldn’t even recognize essentia in the air, now you’re calling a complex compound?”
“That’s so cool!” Lilly’s much more shrill voice adds helpfully. “What are you gonna do with it? How does it feel? Can I touch it?” She asks, bouncing up and down in place for a couple of moments before darting towards my right hand suspending the orb. Ayre, however, is much faster to react and somewhat roughly snags Lilly out of the air a moment before she lands on my hand. I feel Ayre’s skin brush my palm and that urge rises for a moment before I stifle it, focusing on the orb. It’s easy enough to do, since the essence in my hand seems to draw my eyes like a magnet. I reach over and do the same motion, pushing it through my clothes and skin, passing into my chest, but this time, I try to limit how much I distribute to my body, letting the rest diffuse and make its way to my arm.
As the “armor” settles into my skin, I hear the ramshackle chair under me creak, so I stand. … Only to hear the floor creak. Ayre makes a shooing motion after releasing the curious fairy. “Go on! Don’t break my floor!” I oblige, and start to hear the endless list of questions with wings follow me out. “And Lilly, don’t touch his hand. You were the one who wrote that in the note!” comes shouted from the cabin after us.
I find it much easier to move around with this lesser amount of essence. Testing my range of motion and hopping in place with dull thuds on each landing, I dig into the ground, but not nearly as far or hard. Lilly quickly zooms around me in wide arcs. “So, you’re metal now. Does that mean you’re especially sturdy, like the deer? We should test it! Maybe Ayre can try to stab you with her spear?” Before I can respond to either question, she flies off to meet Ayre, who had already been stepping out of the cabin with her weapon—a habit I’ve noticed that she seldom skips. Like most of her habits. “Ayre, he’s basically invincible right now. Try poking him with your spear! But, like, the haft end. Maybe the spear end if it works well?”
Ayre lets out a sigh. “You okay with testing? Lilly is overzealous, but I admit to having some curiosity too.”
I nod, “Yeah, but let’s start with not-weapons first. Come throw a punch. I know you’ve got the raw strength to put me down, so it’ll be just as good of a test.” Turning to my side to keep my right arm away from her, I brace myself and tap my shoulder to indicate where to hit. With little delay or posturing, Ayre walks over and hauls back and slugs me as hard as she can in the arm.
A hollow noise somewhere between hitting metal and striking flesh rings out, and I feel very little of it, even the force behind the blow is significantly lessened. I rock back, and some pain does come through, but Ayre dances backwards, shaking her hand and sucking in a sharp breath and cursing, “That looked like it hurt.” Lilly, ever helpful.
“Well, Lil, it certainly didn’t feel good.” She snaps back, “How are you doing, Allanius?”
I open my mouth to answer but am cut off, “Allanius? That’s your name? Why didn’t I get told?” Lilly looks at Ayre accusingly. “I’m re-evaluating your princely status. That does seem like a highborn name. But it is kinda clumsy, though. Like, I can’t imagine Ayre needing to scream your name while doing something important and having to get through all of those syllables. Something shorter. Something sharper. I’ll get back to you with something better.” Lilly flits over and sits on the nearby windowsill.
I look at Ayre and shrug, “Honestly, I barely fel-”
“Olly! I’m calling you Olly!” She beams at me across the yard with her hands on her hips, looking proud. “Perfect, basically one syllable, has a friendly air, and it’s fun to say. Heroes need punchy names. Everyone knows that. Especially once you save a town or something and everyone starts cheering it. Basically perfect.”
I get a peculiar feeling on hearing the name, cocking my head and closing my eyes. I roll it around in my mind, thinking about it, and something about it feels right. Unable to put more meaning to it than “feeling right”, I nod, “I think that’s good. Allanius never quite felt good to hear, but I didn’t really have anything better. Olly it is.” I find myself smiling as I make the proclamation, but I can’t pin down why.
“Olly is fine by me.” Ayre adds, “So, my question. How was the hit?”
I look pointedly at Lilly before I speak, and she wilts a little bit, looking away and kicking at nothing, looking embarrassed, “As I was saying, I barely felt anything. Now that it’s been a little bit, I think the skin in that area is starting to tighten, though. Getting harder to move my arm, but you mentioned that the elk just gets tougher over time, right? So that seems like a reasonable thing, yeah?”
Ayre walks over and looks closer at my left bicep where she had hit, “It’s definitely shinier than the rest…” She trails as she reaches up and tries to pinch the skin but fails to get hold of any amount of flesh. Turning to look me in the eyes, “You should disperse it. Bodily hardening past a point is a common outcome of Mineralis essence poisoning. Unaddressed, it can lead to permanent changes to your muscles and skin.”
I give her a pensive look, “Last time I forgot everything when I ended the effect…” I shake my head, frowning. “Alright, yeah. Just gotta…do it.” I close my eyes and concentrate. As I’m sifting through the feelings, I feel a hot hand on my shoulder, giving me a comforting feeling of nearness. It makes it a little bit easier, and I manage to drop the spell with less effort. The essence quickly flows through my body with a vague tugging sensation, but it ends quickly enough.
This time, with support nearby, I find it’s easier to ride out the sensation, but the outcome is still beyond explaining. Forgetting something in real-time, able to almost watch the memories go from total recall to entirely gone, is terrifying. For the duration, I try to focus on each aspect of what I used to use the magic, but it’s like grasping at the wind.
After some amount of time, I reopen my eyes, feeling a tightness in my chest. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that…” Unceremoniously, I plop down on a nearby rock and just hold my head in my hands and close my eyes. Not crying, just…feeling. Feeling a lot of things. At the edge of my perception, I hear hushed talking, but I ignore it, focusing instead on controlling my breathing to prevent a repeat of the other day. “It’s recoverable. If these memories are recoverable, then maybe my actual memories are recoverable the same way. I just need to find someone who knows me. Someone who can fill in some blanks.”
I see a bright flash through my eyelids and look up to see Lilly fluttering in front of me holding…something. It’s about the size of a fingertip, perfectly round, and about half-and-half red and white, with a spiral pattern of the two colors. Staring at it, it’s probably more than half as heavy as she is, and she seems to be struggling. “Well? Take it! It’s a gift, and making it made me tired, and it’s heavy.” I reach out my hand, and she drops it, recoiling a foot or so higher into the air before correcting and floating back down.
“It’s pretty, what’s it for?” Lilly looks at me, shock written all over her face.
“It’s candy. Little sweets. You pop it into your mouth and just enjoy the taste for a while” She gives me a disbelieving look before dropping it to smile and make the motion of tossing it into her mouth.
“Ah, alright. Thanks.” I do as instructed. After a few moments, the taste hits my mind, not my tongue. It’s something I’ve been learning, each of the essences I’ve been exposed to have unique tastes, but this one tastes…confusing. Being constructed out of Lilly’s essence that I seem nearly unable to make sense of, I should have expected it.
What does come through, though, is the sensations. It’s cool and refreshing, but there’s an almost spicy burn to it that contrasts the coolness, all underpinned by an energizing sweetness. I roll it around my tongue, just enjoying the sensations for a couple of seconds as I smile idly. “Yeah, this is pretty nice, thanks, Lilly.” I feel my spirits lifting a bit as the candy dissolves and I look at the fairy beaming back at me. It may not be taste, but I can at least enjoy the feelings.
“I only made it! It was her idea, those things are her favorites.” She gestures to Ayre standing a dozen feet away watching the two of us smiling.
I stand, extending an open hand to Lilly as an offer to her to sit, “Since you said you’re tired, I’ll give you a ride as thanks.”
I think I see her face flush a little, though at her scale it’s hard to say for sure. “Can I sit on your shoulder instead? Hands are always weird, people move them a lot.” I nod, and she just darts up and sits down, smoothing her dress while her legs dangle down my chest, occasionally kicking.
“Ayre, you alright running me back through what you know about the…” I pause, wrestling with the idea for a moment before giving up. “I have several more things I want to try.”
