The woods around here have grown familiar quickly. It surely has something to do with the fact that I’m “cheating” when it comes to learning, though, rather than anything relating to me paying good attention. After a few dozen goes at breaking down these trees, I can rattle off everything from their average lifespan to their main means of reproduction, which creatures like to feed on them and which ones use them for shelter. It’s been growing increasingly hard for me to separate that knowledge from my own which has led me to the question—are they even distinct from one another? Does it matter if they are?

  Ironbark Tree

  A towering tree with bark as hard as wrought iron, making it nearly impervious to natural damage. Absorbing its essence grants enhanced physical resilience, allowing the user to withstand immense force and damage without breaking.

  Silverleaf Vine

  A creeping vine with silvery leaves that shimmer in the light, known for conducting energy through its length. Its essence allows the user to conduct magical energy more efficiently, improving the precision and potency of spellcasting.

  I continue walking around the forest, idly picking up flowers, pretty stones, berries, and anything else that comes to hand and watching them…have whatever happens to them happen to them.

  Tinroot Flower

  A small, delicate flower with metallic-tinted petals that can pull trace metals from the soil to strengthen itself. Absorbing its essence enhances the user's ability to draw metal-based materials toward them, making it easier to manipulate or reshape metal objects.

  Cobaltfern

  A fern with deep blue, metallic fronds that releases a faint electrical charge when touched. Gaining its essence provides a limited ability to generate and control small electric currents, useful for powering devices or disabling opponents.

  I still don’t have a good word for it, really. “Eating” makes it sound pretty inherently bad in a way that I don’t like to think about because that would make the connection that what I accidentally did to Ayre was “eating”. That doesn’t work. Absorbing is more accurate and what I’m leaning towards, but it doesn’t really cover the knowledge aspect at all.

  Coppergrass

  A tall, reddish-green grass that is highly conductive and often found clustered around deposits of metal essence. Its essence grants an enhanced connection to metal, making the user more adept at sensing and locating metal in the environment.

  Auric Cluster

  A surface mineral deposit of gold-tinged rock that draws in latent magical energy and amplifies it. Absorbing its essence enhances the user’s ability to amplify their ability to call essentia and shape spells.

  Absorbing and Learning together, maybe? Identifying? I feel a jolt of energy from something I picked up without really thinking and look down and see it in my hand. It’s a small metallic crystal that is taking a considerable amount of time to absorb compared to most things. Not instant, not even fast. I watch the color drain out of it over the course of a minute, transfixed. What began as a bright rust red ends with a featureless quartz-like crystal in my hand.

  Crystallized Mineralis Essentia

  A rare, if naturally occurring, form of essentia that can be found in areas of incredibly high essence density.

  It doesn’t collapse to dust, so I stare at it for a while before flexing my hand as hard as I can, trying to crush it. Something about it resisting the outcome I’ve come to understand as inevitable makes me mad. Violently mad. But after a few moments of trying to squeeze blood from a stone, I stop, relaxing my grip as I consider dropping it. Instead, a surge of unreasonable anger washes over me from somewhere deep inside, and I throw it as hard as I can at a nearby tree after forcing power inside of it. It hits the tree with a splintering crack as it embeds itself deep within its bark, sending a spray of rust-colored wood chips in every direction.

  The little wood-metal fragments clatter down onto something with a series of sharp, glass-like noises. I’d failed to notice that all around this clearing I’ve blindly wandered into are countless outcroppings of those quartz-like crystals—the crystallized, pure, Mineralis essence. Realizing it’s all pure essence flicks a switch in my brain, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from rushing forward—fighting a rising, undeniable need in my mind.

  I’ve not once felt sated since I came too. Always feeling on the brink of starving. Doing the barest minimum, all while constantly being around someone who now is a font of essence unlike anything from any of my memories. That creature could serve to sate me for months, maybe years.

  That thought comes unbidden, and I recognize, distantly, that it’s a wildly dangerous one. But I don’t need to think of her like that. I have a bounty sitting in front of me that I can sate myself with -- the likes of which I’ve not seen. That should be enough, right? Enough to tide me over until…eventually.

  Cautiously, and with faltering movements as I struggle to remain in control of myself, I reach down and place my hand on the largest cluster I can find. The wave of potent energy that washes over me is stupefying. My mind actually wipes blank as new information rushes in, compressing and pushing away everything else I’d been thinking about—everything else that I am is shoved aside.

  Mineralis Essence (Immaterial)

  A relatively common compound essence derived from Ignia and Terran essentia. It serves as the foundation for much complex life with its ease of mixing with Aero essence to form the more complex Sanguis essence. Much of modern society is founded upon this essentia.

  Its chief principia are unyielding will, the rendering of minerals, the development of technology, and the transmission of power.

  When I open my eyes again, my vision has separated into two distinct colors: blinding white and void black. Everything around me is rendered in bas-relief, bright points outlined by dark or dark points outlined by light. Binary. On, Off. I look down: the four-foot tall crystal cluster is entirely devoid of energy, reading like a blank spot in my mind, while the remainder of the field glows like the sun. And it’s all mine. No other resistance like all of the other dense sources in the area. In fact, it will help me overcome that resistance…

  I set about moving to each point of dense light in the area and draw it within myself. Each one helps me do the next faster and more efficiently—wasting less energy to take in the new source of power. By the end, the sources are beginning to crumble away into dust, something that tickles the back of my brain in a distant, satisfying way. A part of me wants to go find the fragment I failed to collapse. But the more I think about it, as the last few sources of light wink out. That desire is problematic. It’s wasteful. I’m only just now, after all this time, starting to recuperate, and I can’t afford to waste anything.

  Breaking and taking are important, vital, necessary. Feeling anything about it is not. The thought ties me up for a while, standing in the middle of the dearth of sources. I consider throwing away that feeling and everything surrounding it, but something stops me, a pain. Something like a shock to my core. A pain in my chest like a punishment from on high. Can’t be rid of it, then. A necessary waste. Which makes it not a waste, I suppose.

  I cast around trying to locate new sources and see nothing but sources so weak compared to my recent bounty that they feel below recognizing as sources at all. But… Something else. I feel it approaching me and fast. Directly behind me if its aura is anything to go by. Waiting to get the drop on me? No matter. I turn to meet it head on and see it outlined against the hazy background of the forest behind it. It stands around eight feet tall and is skittering forward on eight spindly and jagged legs that punch through the ground wherever they land. Its upper body is fractal and sharply geometric, like the many facets of a gemstone given purpose. And from its torso comes two scything limbs raised high to lay into me.

  “Concerning.” A distant part of my brain registers out loud, wasting precious energy to speak. I reconsider leaving well enough alone for that anomaly, but that will have to wait.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Its limbs sweep down, and I raise my right arm to block them. Long having been hardened by the presence of dense Mineralis to the point of near impenetrability. One limb strikes my forearm, biting in a tenth of an inch, but I grab the other with my open hand and hold on, preventing it from pulling away as I sap its power.

  Crystalid Stalker

  Mineralis, Vitreous, Monstrum

  Refractive Form, Essence Reflection

  Using the refractive properties of gems as the basis for its monstrous biology affords it the ability to become transparent at will—something it uses to great effect to catch prey unaware. Its body is incredibly tough, but susceptible to blunt striking against the larger, flatter, surfaces of its body. If attuned properly, its crystalline hide can reflect essence it is attacked with.

  Up this close, I can see its core glowing and distributing essence around its body, but it is all being pulled to the bladed arm and through its gem body and into me. It feels wonderful as I see the last few moments of it approaching me, seeing me turn at the last moment to thwart its attack and inflicting it with the worst pain it’s ever experienced at a mere touch. The powerful feeling is intoxicating as I experience its senses in real time while I steal its vital self. A monster, terrified for its life.

  A curious thought strikes me.

  I let go, and it falls backwards, scrabbling away from me while making a high-pitched whining screech as its many limbs clack against the crystals all over the ground. “Will you attack again? Are you smart enough to know what will happen? Show me what you can do.” I goad it, knowing it can’t understand, but it needs to use more of its abilities to be the most useful to me. It rises high, and I see a pulse of essentia course through its body, and its presence disappears. Becoming a hole in space around me: a useful trick. I focus on the surrounding essence that’s being pushed away to implement its invisibility.

  In any other circumstance, it would be a good tactic, but I can see where it’s not just as well as I can see where it is. Essence is everywhere, even if thinly, so I focus on the true dark spot moving through the world around me and to a presumed blindspot on my far weaker left side. It’s smart enough to recognize the true threat. Perfect.

  It dives in again, making fundamentally the same attack as before, which it immediately learns is a mistake. I catch the bladed limbs with either hand, my left one hurts awfully as I see the blade bite into it, but that sensory information is pointless for now. I channel more Mineralis into my body, increasing my mass and strength, powering my muscles directly by sacrificing the raw immaterial power.

  It thrashes, trying to escape my unyielding grip, but isn’t strong enough to overcome my resistance. A shame. I plant one foot in the middle of its body and pull. With a series of satisfying cracks and eventually the sound of a shattering mirror, the bladed limbs come free with a shower of freed essence from within its body. The arms immediately start to discorporate into immaterial essentia, seeping into the air like countless glittering fireflies. The main segment of its body remains, so I grab it by what passes for a neck with my true arm, and the remainder of its memories come crashing in. It’s knowledge of ambushes, the last few moments where it tried to use all of its natural abilities to defend itself, and the memories of stalking me in particular. It had hung back instead of engaging because it was confused by my behavior.

  I listen to all of the incoming thoughts until they peter out into nothingness—the silence of the void. As its body collapses into useless, meaningless, dust. “That was something strong. Something powerful. Something that had spent its life killing and harvesting and growing stronger. But I’m better, and now stronger because it was weak even at its apex”. The last of its crystalline form collapses in my hands and I stand to leave, chasing a very particular feeling that I have somewhere to be…

  I jog through this essence rich forest, surrounded by tall columns of ultimately weak sources of Mineralis and arbor. Running is a waste, but walking would take too long and consume too much energy over time, so I jog. Efficient usage of energy is necessary—I always seem to be venting essentia from the weaker parts of my body. It's troublesome and means I need to be faster and more reckless.

  As I go, I look down at myself, seeing a vortex of power in my right arm, pulling in ambient essentia as I move. Air and moisture are vaporized on contact, leaving a very slight trail of powder wherever I go, but it’s of no consequence, the trickle of power is only meaningful in the full length of time rather than in any particular moment.

  Years of a trickle can wear down a mountain, after all.

  After what feels like forever, I arrive at a clearing, the place I’m supposed to be, still feeling the high as I do. A somewhat cold smile on my face, a sharpness to my senses, and power in my veins. Why shouldn’t I feel good? I haven’t been able to since I woke up. I’m owed this.

  The moment the thought crosses my mind, I see two figures, one radiating some unfamiliar essence. Not Ignia. Something else that feels like the sun beating down on me. The other…is fuzzy. Looking at it causes my vision to become unclear, as if it’s hard to fathom—unknowable. Something unknowable is unacceptable and needs to be studied more closely.

  I feel that pang in my chest again, like something just gripped my core and…comforted it. Something warm and friendly. It’s deeply unsettling, so I try to ignore it for now. The other figure, the font of the strange heat, is making noises and gesturing with a weapon that seems to be pulling in all of its free essence and concentrating it. A very useful tool. Limits waste, presumably empowers the wielder, and that wielder is already strong to begin with.

  I come to a stop, thinking of the lessons of the Crystalid and how it would handle a scenario like this, only to realize it showed me personally. It would attack head on when they weren’t expecting it. That’ll do. They don’t seem like they want to fight, which feels odd, the presence feels familiar, and I remember fighting it before…

  Another pang of pain in my chest, sharper, warmer, and distractingly pleasant. The opposite of anything I needed to be feeling right now. I try to throw it aside again, but it persists, so I decide that these two must be related to it and causing it. If that’s the case, I know how to learn about it easily.

  “You in there, Olly? I don’t want to hurt you if I don’t have to.” It’s a clear threat, but not one with conviction. “Lilly, back up and make some space.” The unknowable thing moves away, and I see essence beginning to gather around it, likely preparing a spell, so I’ll have to keep the Ignia user between us. I exhale and dart forward to close the gap, with my arm elongating to form a bladed limb on the back side of my hand: another “gift” from the stalker.

  The tool flashes up and blocks my probing strike with startling force, and before I can react, its haft swings up and at my chin as part of the swipe. I narrowly twist out of the way, and it grazes my skin, leaving a trail of burning essence in the air that is quickly reabsorbed by the weapon. The wielder leaps backwards with a gust of air that batters me, creating space as it drops into a low defensive stance as Aero gathers around them. Annoyingly staying out of my range and keeping me open for their partner. Too flighty, too hard to catch.

  I opt to test the waters on the other one, feinting as if I were going to close the gap again, but instead call upon the Crystalid’s refractive talents to obscure my movements and twist, taking two heavy steps before planting myself to launch at the much smaller, hazy, source. It isn't expecting it and fails to move in time. My borrowed limb strikes out, but halfway through the swing I see something bright flash in the hazy thing's core, in its tiny chest—I feel something unlike anything I’ve ever experienced as strident words slam into my mind.

  Olly won't hurt me.

  Even while still in the air, I have to tuck my body, cringing into a fetal position, before I slam into the ground and dig a divot. My chest, my core, is on fire. Fighting through the warming sensation and a rising tide of something pulling at the fringes of my consciousness, I kip up to my feet and throw myself at the presumed source of the sensation with an animalistic snarl.

  “Lilly! Up!” I hear the voice shout as my target darts skyward. The voice is cut short as a solid wall of Aero essence slams into my back, lifting me off the ground and tossing me thirty feet distant as it carries along with me. I feel my obscuring effect dissipate and leave my mind. Something that shouldn’t happen. “Lilly, get clear. I need to focus, and I can’t keep protecting you like that.” No matter, the spell that just struck me’s construction comes to mind, and I begin withdrawing from my limited stores of aero. I force my own vital essence into the spell to empower it further.

  Gust

  [Projectile | Wall | Aero]

  I gesture at the figure in the distance, pumping excess free essence from around me into the spell and lose it, aiming to overpower whatever they can muster as a defense. There’s a crack that splits the air as a wave of force bursts from my extended right hand. The figure raises their weapon and sweeps it through the wave, absorbing that segment of the wave seemingly effortlessly and smoothly, launching into a sprint at me. They close the gap before I can meaningfully raise a defense, as they beat their wings to gain speed with each stride.

  I raise my bladed arm to block, but the coming blow shatters through it with all of its extra momentum, sending the blade's knowledge scattering along with the few remaining pieces of the blade and carrying through to impact the side of my head with the flat of the weapon. There’s a single, solitary, moment of splitting pain followed by a confused daze.

  I feel that warmth in my chest again. It’s…nice. It’s comforting, and it suddenly amplifies as I feel tiny hands—Lilly’s hands—press into my cheek. There’s excruciating pain that feels like someone is dragging knives through my body, but after a while of that, I’m left with the familiar warmth and clarity coming back to my mind. The kind warmth soothes but also starkly reminds me. The last half hour of my life comes flooding back into my mind like a hammer as my disassociation flees and I opt to keep my eyes closed. I feel the thoughts that had overcome me—my own thoughts, the desires I felt and how I didn’t even want to stop it. The thoughts race around and around, leaving me feeling dizzy, so instead of facing the world, I decide to curl up on my side, and try to ignore all of the surrounding sounds. Pleading, concerns, demands, all backed up by the sound of someone crying.