Chapter 6

After seeing Lyla happily rave in her language about something he was unsure about, Kalex decided it was high time to start figuring out the scope of his presence in this new world. Reaching out into the cave and the cliffside where the cave resided was easier than he thought. The vague notion of sending his presence out was all that was needed to achieve his task.

With his initial surprise at the density of presence all around him out of the way, he began to dig deeper and look for some base components he could use for a translator. On Diat, translators were common and something anyone could afford due to the ease of creation. In any given town, there could be hundreds of languages spoken at any given time. In Mourtia, language was not standardized, so it wasn’t uncommon for each family to speak a different language.

This was helpful because activating a translator, especially a cheap one, was time-consuming and left an itch in the mind when used, so being able to talk to everyone without a translator in the familial complex was a must. For Kalex’s purpose, a strong storage object and a small amount of presence conducting metal were all that was needed. Once he had the ingredients, his presence manipulation would do all the hard work.

Immediately Kalex saw something incredibly bright about two rods deep in the stone wall of the cave. It gave off the impression of toughness and durability and knew he had found the shell of his translator, the only problem was getting it out. Kalex waddled over to the wall and started clawing at it with his bare hands to no avail.

While focusing on the item, a thought occurred to him, he had put all of his thoughts on the singular task to help heal Lyla, maybe he could do the same with this item. With every ounce of willpower he had, Kalex tried pulling the item towards himself but was fruitless after a few units of trying. His presence was trying to pull it to him but there was a ton of stone in the way. Kalex heaved a heavy breath. “Time to excavate.”

Using one's presence to affect physical objects was nothing new to Kalex. He had been doing it most of his life, but scooping a small divot in the ground was the extent of his presence digging abilities. He was not deterred, standing tall with his full half-a-rod height, a mask of determination crossed his face. He sent a small wisp of presence in a scooping motion at the stone wall. To his surprise, it glided close to the surface but didn’t make contact. Cocking his head to the side in disbelief, he tried again only for the same thing to happen.

Letting go of his physical presence, he instead sent his presence out to detect what was going on with this stone. Like most of the natural resources he’d seen, this stone was completely packed with presence and it soon became obvious that the density had caused his attempts to fail. As if ice had replaced his brain, an idea popped into his head. Maybe he could drain the presence like most others did on Diat when crafting items. The presence in the stone seemed neverending, but it was worth a try.

Kalex laid his presence on the surface of the stone in the shape of a rectangle, from the floor to about a rod and a half up the wall. Keeping his presence shallow in the rock was difficult at first but he began to slowly integrate his presence with the stones. Within only a unit, his presence snapped into place like it was meant to be there, perfectly melding with the presence of the small part of the wall.

Kalex tried to over-exert his presence in the small area to damage the physical structure but to no avail. There seemed to be too much stone behind the small part he wrapped in his presence to be overwhelmed by just trying to overfill it. Kalex was ready to call it a day and try to communicate with Lyla for help on this matter but he had one last thing to try.

With his presence solidly meshed with the small area, he pulled. His presence snapped back into him as the expected resistance from the wall’s presence was nonexistent. Feeling like a failure, he started to walk towards Lyla. After he took his first step in her direction, the next thing to touch the ground was his face.

A familiar sight of mottled darkness greeted Kalex. Without the long gray marks, numerous sparks, and ethereal fog marking the perimeter of the space, it would’ve seemed like an endless void. The light blue haze was peculiar in the sense that he had never seen it before but also felt intimately connected to it. Carefully connecting to the fog, Kalex immediately knew what had invaded this space.

It released a presence of stalwartness that only a mountain could exude and some other feelings he couldn’t quite parse. He knew he had done the impossible. Kalex absorbed the latent presence from the small section of the stone wall. The difficult task was figuring out what to do with this foreign presence. Kalex gently pulled the presence in, attempting to condense it into one spot, and in doing so, noticed that the smoke-like substance tended to drift towards the various sparks that were scattered through the space. As an experiment, Kalex willed the presence to the brightest spark, the one that felt closest to him.

Pain suddenly engulfed every sense as the alien presence covered the spark completely, leaving only a dim light showing through. In pain, he began to shake the spark with fervor to try and release himself from the agony. The presence stuck to the spark and wouldn’t budge, in pain-filled desperation, he began to spin the spark in hopes of separating it. The pain started to subside as the blue covering on the spark started to diminish.

The spark itself glowed brighter as it cleared up, giving the now clear-headed Kalex an idea. With a force of will, every other spark began to spin and quickly came closer to the large spark that had just consumed the stone’s presence. To Kalex, the space seemed to wobble like a cup on the edge of a serving tray. Quickly realizing the issue and sending a mental thank you to his old instructors, he began to ponder his presence.

To Kalex’s knowledge, pondering one’s presence was different for everyone but he had asked anyone he could about their process to quickly find the perfect one for him. A spike of pain hit his heart as he thought about the process that had resonated with him the most. His ideal process was one that heavily took from the Elder Seer's, with only a few changes. Pushing the mixed emotions away, he focused on his presence and began to cycle it.

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Kalex had pondered his presence thousands of times but seeing the process was something else completely. Seeing the sparks and the gray scars moving circularly in a blur disoriented him enough to almost break focus. Slowly all of the sparks gathered into a central point, and as they did, they spun faster and the scars showing the bounds of the darkness pulled in ever so slightly. The sparks found the absolute center and clicked into place, creating a burst of light so bright that the darkness was extinguished for a moment.

Everything felt different in the space as, instead of having hundreds of small sparks, one large spark was the only resident, filling the darkness with light and clearly showing the edges of the space. A pulse of his presence shot out of his new spark and crashed against the confines of the space. The pulses grew in tempo causing immeasurable pain with every impact. Kalex promptly stopped his pondering and as the spark came to a stop, the pain began to fade.

Curiosity invaded his every thought, but he had no idea where to begin. Peering into the far side of the space, he noticed what seemed like a corner. Before he could investigate further, he was abruptly brought back to the real world. He opened his eyes and was greeted by an upset Lyla.

Kalex blinked away his unfocused vision and gave Lyla the biggest smile he could muster which seemed to pacify her somewhat. The slight lull was quickly interrupted by a large crash off to the side where Kalex had done his experiment. The part of the wall that was devoid of presence crumbled and peeled away from the wall. He wiggled his way from Lyla’s embrace and walked to the wall as swiftly as his tiny legs would allow.

He stood before the door-sized divot he had made and wrestled with the fear of having to go through the process of pondering every bit of new presence he took in. Turning his fearful face to a more determined expression, he began to ponder, not deeply as he had been taught but shallowly so he could remain lucid. Integrating his presence with the stone had become easier than the first time he had done it as the presence seemed to want to be ingested.

The presence of the stone felt like it was becoming a part of his spark as quickly as it came in, leading Kalex to accelerate his pace. Within a quarter of a unit, he had siphoned the presence from the stone that stood in the way of his prize. With the previous stone falling apart after the presence had been taken, Kalex looked over to a shell-shocked Lyla, pointed at the empty stone, and motioned her to punch it.

It took a few attempts to get his point across, but when she firmly hit the wall, it crumbled into fine sand, leaving a hallway to his prize. An ordinary-looking translucent black rock was embedded in the wall giving off an intensely bright light to Kalex’s presence sight, looking over at a stunned Lyla, he pointed at the stone and hoped she understood him as the rock was a rod high and he couldn’t hope to reach it with his stature.

With the rock firmly in his grasp, Kalex decided to take a break and ruminate on everything he had experienced. He felt stronger and could send his presence out farther, he could feel the spark inside of him as well as the presence that suffused his body. He had changed and become an even stronger Seer. If the Elder could see him now, she wouldn’t have had a chance to sneak up on him let alone stab him with an ion blade.

With those thoughts, He felt safe for the first time in a long time. Leaving his thoughts on a happy note, he quickly started the preparation to create a translator. He still needed a metal of some sort to infuse into the rock to make it conductive to presence but with his new found abilities, he knew that finding some would be a cakewalk.

Seeping his presence into the rock was as easy as breathing, his control had grown to new levels in the short time he had escaped the darkness. To his surprise, the presence of the rock danced around with his effortlessly and he decided to leave a bit of his behind. Kalex gasped as the rock held his presence and stayed stable. Usually adding his presence to anything caused it to crack unless metal was added. Maybe he didn’t need any metal infusions to make what he wanted.

Pulling his presence out of the rock, he surrounded it instead and gently crushed the rock, condensing its form and the natural presence held inside. The procedure was successful and Kalex was left with a rock that looked the same but small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

Lyla sat close to Kalex during the entirety of the condensing process and marveled at what she had seen. If she was anything but the child of roamers, she would’ve fainted due to the sheer insanity of what was happening. The baby looked exhausted and was wavering with sleepiness. As she started to reach out to him to take him to his bed, Kalex started to violently shake.

A gale erupted out of Kalex, pushing Lyla to the far side of the cave, luckily she could still see what was happening to the child. One of the scars that went from his temple to his throat started peeling off with a squelching sound that made shivers run down her spine. Once fully free, the scar zipped directly into the hand that held the rock, causing the eerie wind to end and the rock to weakly pulse with light.

Kalex screamed as the shaking stopped. Lyla was on her feet and sprinting towards the newborn but was held back by the rock. It was blocking her way and sent pulses of wind that kept her at bay. “Get out of the way!” Lyla yelled at the rock. “I don’t want him to die!” The wind died down and the rock moved towards Lyla, eventually revolving around her and pulsing ominously.

After a few seconds of swatting at the rock, it moved away from her and started to dance around Kalex’s head in the same way. A few seconds passed and the rock found its way back to Kalex’s hand. Finally able to approach, Lyla kneeled and looked into the face of the boy who only sported one facial scar instead of two.

“I’m so glad you’re alright, after everything that’s happened in the past few days and all the insane things I’ve seen you do, I didn’t want to lose you to a little wind or a weird floating rock.” Lyla noticed Kalex’s eyes growing wet. “We’re all each other has and ever since I saw you in Fulrog, I knew that our meeting wasn’t random. I've spent hours lost in thought about our situation and came to only one conclusion. I promise you that I will be the best big sister ever!”

Tears rolled down Kalex’s face. “And I’ll try to be the best brother ever.” Understanding washed over Lyla. Kalex tilted his head to the side in confusion.

“And what is an hour?” Kalex said with curiousness.

With a hiccup, Lyla burst into tears.