We do not know everything about the people of the Savage Lands. We have not been able to truly study them to learn everything about them. But what we do know is that they, like the Stoelians, call the stages by the Stage it is; Stage One through to Stage Seven. Some individual tribes may have their own nomenclature for each stage but, even when united under the Beast King’s rule, they were not so unified that they could not decide on which names to use so, by necessity, they were forced to refer to the Stages by their numbers.
Excerpt: An Examination of Power – Shouza Namano
Ashe gazed down at the core in his hands, turning it around. It was rougher than Ashe had expected, tiny burrs covering the entire surface and giving it a really good grip. Ashe had heard about cores, but he’d never actually seen one in real life. From what he knew, only the richest of families had money to advance their children by giving them cores. Holding one in real life, even if it was only the core of a stage 1 Cored beast, was surreal.
A pit in his stomach, Ashe lifted his gaze to look Erin in her blue eyes, still nervous about absorbing the energy from the core. Having never done anything even remotely like it, Ashe was worried about what would happen but he also knew that Sammath and Erin were counting on him to get stronger. If he didn’t do this, then he might be too weak to save them from something that he would be able to defeat if he did absorb the energy in the core.
One last time, Ashe checked with Erin what he needed to do. When Erin just voiced the instructions running through his head on repeat, Ashe nodded and closed his eyes. While his eyes stayed dark, a light grew in Ashe’s perception as he moved his mind to look at his Inkwell. Swirling, white energy sat inside Ashe’s Inkwell, though it was still slightly drained from the Rune he’d cast at the hare earlier, and Ashe drew on it with a small force of will.
Running the Ink through the channels in his arm to his finger was practically second nature by now and Ashe extended his Ink into the core, finding a vast reservoir inside that dwarfed his own Inkwell. Wow, there really is a massive difference between the pre-stages and the first stage. Repeating Erin’s instructions in his mind, Ashe pierced the energy in the core with his Ink and began to try and drain the energy and convert it to Ink.
Outside of his mind, Ashe felt himself begin to sweat as he exerted his willpower, struggling with how difficult the exercise in control was. Erin was right. It was hard.
‘What are you doing, Boy?!’ Cab’s rumbly voice echoed through Ashe’s head, tinged with panic, something Ashe had never heard in the demon’s voice before. That wasn’t to say the demon didn’t have emotion in his voice, in fact Ashe was quite familiar with emotions like derision, pride and anger. What Ashe had never felt from Cab before was any variation of fear. ‘If you don’t stop this RIGHT NOW, you’re going to kill yourself.’
Spurred into action by how unusual it was for Cab to display anything remotely resembling panic, Ashe tried to stop draining the core but no matter what he did, the energy kept flowing. It was like a person trying to block a dam’s outlet by standing in the way of the rushing water; while Ashe could just barely hold his own position in the stream of oncoming energy, he wasn’t able to do anything about the flow because he’d just be swept up in the torrent.
‘I can’t stop it, Cab. It’s too strong.’ Ashe yelled into his mind as he frantically, futilely, continued to try and stop the flow of energy. Even as Ashe yelled to his demon, the first of the energy began to reach his Inkwell and Ashe yelled in pain as the sides of his Inkwell immediately began straining, stretching as the energy poured in. Ashe mentally screamed as cracks began forming in the walls of his Inkwell.
‘Listen to me, Ashe, if you want to live!’ Cab’s gravelly voice, echoing through Ashe’s head was like a safety line that Ashe gripped onto with both hands, ‘Enchanting is about using images and symbols to create effects. Use some Ink out of your Inkwell and draw a path for the energy to flow down. That will help to control the flow of the energy.’
Desperately, Ashe used his mind to pull on his Ink and, beginning at his Inkwell, he began to follow the path of the rampaging energy, drawing a tunnel around it so that it would be limited only to the path that Ashe drew for it. Along the way, Ashe drew a number of blocks, limiters, that would stop so much energy from flowing into his Inkwell. Grimacing at the spikes of pain that ran through his Inkwell as he did so, Ashe went as fast as he could while ensuring there weren’t any flaws in the drawing.
While the tunnel regulated the flow of energy, though, it didn’t stop the influx and Ashe was desperately yelling for Cab to tell him what was next as the walls of his Inkwell bulged and strained, cracking under the stress and pressure from the energy inside.
‘Do you know how to mix ink?’ Cab’s voice echoed through Ashe’s head, asking a question that seemed so out of place that Ashe paused for a moment, confused, before the pain brought him back.
‘No. I don’t.’ Ashe responded, ‘Why?’
‘Then listen to me carefully because I don’t have time to say this more than once. You need to draw a Rune for fire underneath your Inkwell. I don’t think you have enough Ink left, so I will lend you some of my power. After that, you need to find a way to stir the energy and, finally, you need to thicken it by pulling it together with your strength of mind. If you don’t thicken it, then there will be too much energy to contain and your Inkwell will shatter.’
‘How-’
‘There’s no time, Ashe. Do what I said. NOW! There’s a reason why the energy is called Ink.’
Spurred into action, Ashe frantically looked towards Cab’s demonic core, the swirl of red energy streaked with black. Grasping onto the energy with his mind, it felt strangely familiar, as though he had channelled the energy thousands of times before, yet unfamiliar because he’d never actually done so. Disregarding the strange feeling, Ashe drew the energy towards his Inkwell. Looking into the empty space below his energy, Ashe began using Cab’s vast reserves of energy to trace the Rune of fire. Inside his body, or at least the metaphysical space that represented his body, Ashe didn’t have to struggle to push the energy out and could directly lay the Rune onto the space without having to actually push away the material occupying the space where Ashe was Engraving.
After laying down one Rune of fire, Ashe realised that it wouldn’t be enough. Gazing at the Rune, each red stroke of Cab’s energy was broken only the black that streaked the power. Each line and curve emitted a mild heat in all directions. Mild heat, however, wasn’t enough. Energy from the core was coming in faster than it could be ‘heated’.
Ashe quickly weighed up his options before settling on the only path forward he could see: he needed more Runes. Drawing more and more of Cab’s power, Ashe traced the initial Rune over and over again. Every time he did so, the Rune got slightly thicker and emitted more heat until, eventually, the energy from the core, while not boiling, seemed to be moving around in Ashe’s Inkwell.
Leaving the Runes to emit heat, Ashe moved his attention to the second step, once again grimacing in pain as more cracks appeared in his Inkwell. If Ashe didn’t hurry up, then he’d lose his ability to Enchant forever, if not outright die. Taking ahold of what little energy of his own was left in his Inkwell, Ashe began to spin it around. After what felt like forever, the motion of Ashe’s Ink began to translate to the energy from the core, slowly making everything begin to spin around inside of the Inkwell. Only when everything inside of the Inkwell was spinning and roiling and Ashe was sure that it would continue did Ashe follow Cab’s final instruction, grimacing with pain as he did so.
Ashe sent his consciousness into his Inkwell and pulled out a tiny piece of Ink, alongside a small strand of the energy and tried to push them together. It didn’t work. No amount of mental pushing and shoving did anything to the energy except push them around each other. Ashe tried to surround the core’s energy in his own but, again, it did nothing. By this point, the energy from the core had begun to actually bend Ashe’s Inkwell, pushing against the walls of the Inkwell as it spun around. More cracks tore themselves along the inside walls of Ashe’s energy storage and he screamed out, though whether it was only mental or whether he physically screamed, he didn’t know.
Finally, a crack tore itself completely through the wall of Ashe’s Inkwell, exposing it to the darkness surrounding the Inkwell. Energy began leaking through the crack and a burning sensation arose in Ashe’s head. It felt like it was physically coming from his torso but, at the same time, like all of the pain was mental. Ashe screamed louder and grabbed onto the two energies in desperation. In one last, desperate attempt to make mix the two energies, he linked the core’s energy to his Ink and the Ink rapidly consumed the energy, transforming it.
Grabbing ahold of more energy, Ashe linked it to the Ink that he was holding and, once again, it was like the energy was rapidly infected, turning into Ink. While that helped Ashe’s energy, it didn’t help with the pressure pushing at Ashe’s core as it just changed the energy, not compressed it. Drawing a Rune for attraction at the centre of his Inkwell, Ashe started converting energy from the core as fast as he could and sending it towards the Rune. Even as he did this, he was pushing down on the energy, crunching it down and compressing it to make it smaller but more potent. Ashe then had to flick his attention to spinning his energy again, as the attraction Rune slowed it down too quickly, before starting the cycle again.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
While Ashe was mostly able to stabilise himself by doing this, he soon felt that his attention was slipping. Each time he switched between tasks, his ability to do everything lessened and the more his attention flicked between everything, the harder it grew. Ashe kept on going, though, because it was the only thing he could do. As Ashe continued to condense, spin, and convert his Ink and the energy, the small ball of thickened Ink steadily grew in the centre of his Inkwell, until it was touching the walls of his Inkwell and the energy from the core began to clog up the tunnel, creating a backlog and straining against the walls of Ashe’s drawn tunnel. As soon as Ashe tried to add maintaining the tunnel to his rotation of tasks, everything started piling up exponentially faster and the tunnel walls began to tear.
Like the core’s energy was water and the tunnel was made of paper, the tunnel’s Ink was quickly eroded by the water and small rips tore in the tunnel’s sides, quickly widening. Ashe screamed as energy began running through his body, rampaging through his muscles. Keep on spinning your Ink, Ashe! Cab’s gravelly voice came just in time, I’ll take care of this nuisance. Ashe suddenly felt an incomprehensibly vast mind brush up against his mind, so foreign yet so familiar, as Cab seized control of the rampaging energy and coated the tunnel in a layer of his black-streaked, red energy. As Ashe kept on spinning his Ink and converting the energy, trying to pack it down, trying to thicken his Ink even more, he suddenly felt as though a massive beast was looming above him.
Heart pulsing rapidly, or at least that’s how Ashe felt, Ashe realised that Cab had simply ‘sat’ down next to him in the mindscape, or whatever you’d call where Ashe found himself. Mentally grunting, Ashe spoke up, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the tunnel?’
A ripple ran through Ashe’s Ink as Cab waved his ‘hand’, despite the presence being invisible and intangible, and Ashe grunted as all of the spinning in his Ink was completely halted. Pushing on it as hard as he could, Ashe managed to slowly get it spinning again, though it was far harder to start than it had been before as there was more energy and it was thicker. ‘Oops, I’ll have to be more careful,’ Cab didn’t really sound as though he cared about nearly killing Ashe, but that was just the demon’s callous nature.
‘Alright, Boy. Do you remember how you broke through to the Dawn Stage from the Key Stage?’
Yes, Ashe grunted out. While his first advancement, from the Lock to the Key Stages had merely required gaining the ability to use and absorb energy, advancing to the Dawn Stage from the Key Stage had been more complicated. With the advancement, Ashe had needed to figure out exactly what his abilities were when he used Ink and, with that, form an Ink that was designed to let him use his abilities. When Ashe had asked why people couldn’t just use one type of Ink, Cab had said something about calligraphy and drawing Inks being different and Inks that could do more than one thing well, which was what Ashe needed, being even harder to make, but Ashe hadn’t really got the analogy. Ashe’s Inkwell cracked slightly more, hairline cracks snaking out from the cracks that were already there and starting on making paths between the cracks.
‘Good. We’re not going to do that.’ Ashe would’ve cursed the demon out if he hadn’t been concentrating on trying to keep everything running smoothly. ‘What we are going to do, however, is one of the steps to break through that you’re going to use for as long as you grow in power. We are going to enlarge your Inkwell. Grab as much Ink as you can and bring it outside your Inkwell.’
Ashe grabbed a metaphorical fistful of Ink, even as he tried to keep the rest of the Ink spinning and thickening. Ashe felt Cab’s consciousness move alongside him, following the Ink that Ashe had a hold of. ‘Stop here,’ Cab told Ashe, and the boy did as the demon said, ‘This is as far out as we can go with how much Ink you’ll have. Now, Ashe, you need to make yourself a new Inkwell. While there are ways that we can use in the future to simply expand your Inkwell, this is the best way, in my opinion, and it’s also the only option we have right now.’ Cab looked towards Ashe’s Inkwell as the hairline cracks grew just a bit more and he felt the demon grin, ‘Have fun, Ashe. Either you’ll form your new Inkwell or die trying. Either way, I’ll enjoy the show.’
‘Motherfucking rat bastard,’ Ashe couldn’t help but mentally yell at the demon as Cab’s mental form retreated.
All Ashe got in reply was a dark chuckle from the demon, ‘Find me a mother to fuck and I’ll show you just how right you are.’
Ashe turned his full attention back to the task at hand, desperately grabbing onto his Ink and beginning to use it to sculpt… draw… create… form… Ashe didn’t know the exact term one would use to describe what he was doing. Whatever word you used didn’t matter, though, as he began to copy the thickness and shape of his cracking Inkwell, taking Ink from it as quickly as he could, while still trying to maintain the other tasks of stirring the energy in his inkwell, converting the core’s energy to Ink, and thickening his Ink. When Ashe felt Cab take over those three tasks, he nearly sighed in relief as he immediately went back to building his Inkwell. When Ashe felt the torrent of energy from the core begin to peter out, he mentally smiled and continued. Only when barely anything remained in Ashe’s Inkwell and Cab had dissolved the tunnel, had no more energy to convert to Ink, and had stopped thickening the remaining Ink did Ashe begin to slow down, waiting for Cab’s guidance with only the tiniest sliver of blackness peeking through the glowing white Inkwell that Ashe had formed, so similar in shape to his initial Inkwell but so different in colour as his other one was black in colour, slightly lighter than the void.
‘Well done, Boy. You’re alive. Now there are only a couple things that we need to do. But first, dispel the heat Runes.’ Ashe looked over at the glowing red Runes, black streaks running through the strokes, and focussed, wiping them away. With that done, he looked to Cab for instruction. The demon nodded and spoke up again, ‘Firstly, you need to complete the shell of your Inkwell. Then secondly, you need to break up your current Inkwell and then use it as a raw material to line the outside and inside of your new Inkwell. If you don’t, the Ink that forms the shell will slowly bleed away until you have no Inkwell left, forcing you to live a crippled life as a mortal.’ Cab shuddered before speaking up one last time, ‘Good luck, Boy. I’ll be watching. Hopefully it’s painful.’ With that, Cab disappeared back into the mental void and left Ashe to finish his Inkwell.
Ashe grabbed onto the last of his Ink and used it to form the final piece in the shell of his new Inkwell. The blackness of the space beyond disappeared, replaced by the flawless shell. Not surprised by how perfectly Cab had judged the amount of Ink Ashe would have, Ashe was hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion and nausea as the last of his Ink was used up. Pushing past the distracting sensations for the time being, Ashe looked at his initial Inkwell and at the cracks in the shell, oh that was going to hurt.
Gathering all of his mental energy, not to be confused with his Ink, Ashe formed it into a massive, blunt object, like a hammer, and brought it smashing down towards his old Inkwell. As it shattered into thousands of pieces, Ashe found himself screaming at a note so high-pitched that he was only able to produce the sound in his head, not with his actual vocal chords.
Unwilling to let the pain be for nothing, though, Ashe grabbed onto the shards with his mind, roughly gripping them. What did he do now? Ashe had broken his Inkwell into pieces but Cab had said that he also needed to use it to coat his new Inkwell. How the hell was he going to do that? ‘Cab!’ Ashe yelled into the void, nausea clawing at his concentration, ‘CAB!’ Ashe yelled louder. The demon didn’t answer.
Oh, fuck it. If Cab killed Ashe afterward, then so be it. The only other option was going to kill Ashe, anyway. Ashe mentally reached out to Cab’s roiling black and red core, making sure to maintain a hold on the shattered pieces of his Inkwell as he did so. Grabbing Cab’s energy, Ashe didn’t immediately die or feel excruciating pain, which he took as a good sign. Other times he’d tried this, the demon had made sure to… educate him on his mistakes. Bringing as much energy as he could hold, Ashe moved quickly back to the floating debris of his old Inkwell, sitting inside the glowing white sphere of Ink. With Cab’s energy, Ashe drew two Runes. The first Rune was one for fluidity, a Rune normally used by Shinian blacksmiths and sculptors to literally shape solid stone and metal with their bare hands. Ashe wanted to turn the solid pieces into something that would mould to the faces of his new Inkwell. Secondly, Ashe used the Spreading Rune, one designed to evenly distribute something across a surface and something that was typically used to evenly spread paint or icing.
Ashe then ran the fluidity Rune over the pieces, making the material malleable enough that he could form it into spheres, even if he wouldn’t be getting any art awards. While Ashe did have to continuously steal energy from Cab’s core to power the Rune, he didn’t think the demon would mind that much as Ashe was barely making a dent in the stores. After running everything over the fluidity Rune, Ashe separated the semi-fluid pieces into two orbs, one slightly bigger than the other. Working quickly, Ashe expanded the smaller orb until it fit over the inside of his new Inkwell, covering it in the black, though not pitch-black, substance that had formed his initial inkwell. As he did this, Ashe moved the second orb outside and cut it into two pieces. Moving one piece to either side of his new Inkwell, Ashe grew the hemispheres in a similar fashion to the sphere on the inside of his new Inkwell, roughly coating the outside in the unusual substance. Moving inside again, Ashe used the Spreading Rune like a brush, running it all over the inside of his Inkwell to spread the material evenly. Ashe moved outside, dragging the spreading Rune with him, and began to spread the material evenly, like he did for the inside of his new Inkwell, when he had a thought, Why was Ashe able to bring the Rune through the walls of his Inkwell? For that matter, why was Ashe always able to move his Ink through the walls before? Didn’t Cab say that it blocked Ink.
Ashe pushed the thought out of his head as he continued to spread the material around, he would just have to ask Cab later, and finished up just as the effects of the fluidity Rune were beginning to wear off. Luckily for Ashe, he didn’t have to physically move everything himself, and could just move it with a thought. If he’d had to move everything physically, Ashe would have had to apply the fluidity Rune a number of times. Finally, when everything was done, Ashe dispelled the spreading Rune and revied his handiwork, satisfied. After a few seconds passed without concentrating intently, though, Ashe became acutely aware of every single sensation in his body.
Wrenched from his metaphysical viewing of his new Inkwell, Ashe was ravaged by a number of sensations. It felt like shattered glass was chewing up the inside of his torso, his stomach seemed to be doing its best to imitate the violence of an ocean in a typhoon, and his head seemed to have been cracked open like a sculptor had banged a chisel just slightly too hard. Light beamed down into his eyes, exacerbating his headache as salty water blocked his vision.
With all of that plaguing him, Ashe promptly sat with Sammath and Erin’s help, vomited off to the side – maybe hitting Sammath in the process, and lay back down again, slipping into blissful oblivion.