Ember was running. The feeling was disorienting and she tried looking around but like before when she relived her memories, she had no control over her body. Instead, she kept running. Her body ached and a mixture of grief and fear covered her mind. Her breath came out in ragged spurts that held back tears.
Eventually she stopped and looked around her. Her gaze frantic, then her eyes landed on what she was looking for. It was a deep hole near a tree trunk. Ember scrambled into it. Her thin, malnourished body barely fit, but she managed. It looked to be some animals burrow that hadn't return and it was deep. She grabbed several branches from the forest ground, spreading them over her hiding place.
Sinking deeper into the hole, she waited. It wasn't long before the beast came. It was large and reminiscent of a gorilla but bigger with dark green fur that blended into the forest and yellow eyes. Its teeth were sharp like that of a carnivore meant to eat flesh. The beast had the strength of a ranked Seedling with altered strength as well as both regeneration and rejuvenation.
Ember tried not to breathe as the creature searched for her. The beast looked around, his nostrils flaring. It moved closer to the burrow she hid in. She covered her mouth, trying not to make a sound. The creature paced outside her hiding spot, agitated. Then abruptly, it struck its hand through the hole.
She barely held back her cry as the ape's hand groped for her. Ember pressed herself further back in the hole, staying out of reach. The gorilla let out another cry and then pulled its hand back. Ember waited, hoping the beast would go away. She started to relax but then a yellow eye peered at her.
The ape shrieked and then tried to get at her with new zeal. The beast clawed at the hole, throwing away chunks of dirt. It would be a matter of time until it would get to her. Ember twisted and began her own digging, trying to move deeper into the burrow.
A guttural growl came from the ape as if it comprehended that she was trying to escape and as she dug so did it, moving deeper. She widened the burrow, sinking deeper into it. Her desperation ignoring how worn her body was but she knew she wouldn't be able to continue this forever.
Suddenly the dirt shifted. Ember's eyes widened and then the entrance to the burrow collapsed. Ember laid there, buried alive.
Screw this memory.
The memory was from the beginning of her tyrant life. She had successful killed Lord Felis in the beginning of her life. She had even snuck around to do it, making sure the trail wouldn't lead to her but somehow, she had been found out. She suspected it was a Seedling with some sort of ability that made it possible.
In the end, her and her family escaped through the forest. At first it was fine, her father's life as a logger meant he was familiar with the woods. He even managed to handle a few of the monsters and beasts they encountered. But the people that had been sent after them were Seedlings and eventually they were forced to move deep into the forest where the awaken beasts laid.
They lost their trail only to find themselves hunted by beasts as strong as Seedlings. Ember had managed to find them a safe base to hole up in, though everyday she brought up Finder to check if it was still safe or a new location could be found. She was hoping to awaken a new level of her power, one that would show her the awaken beasts and seedlings so she could navigate them out of the forest and into safety.
In the end, she had went to a location to scavenge for food with her father when they were attacked by the ape. Her father...he didn't make it. She ran but couldn't run back to the base and lead the creature them. So she hid and now.
Scratch, scratch.
It was the sound of digging.
To this day, Ember doesn't know how long she was trapped in the burrow. She would hear the digging of the ape and sometimes she wouldn't. Sometimes it seemed a long time would pass without any sound and she would call up Finder in an attempt to discover if the ape was still outside. But Finder wouldn't show her.
The air was thinner and Ember found herself sliding in and out of consciousness. Then all of a sudden, the digging grew louder. She tried to move but her body was too weak. She could barely keep her eyes open. All of a sudden there was light, and a strong hand grabbed her. She tried to struggle but it made no difference.
Fresh air filled her lungs and she found herself staring into a man's face. His skin was dark and his brown eyes seemed to burn with a natural fire that mixed with surprise and confusion. Be beyond that was Finder. The map still hovered in the air in front of her and a new message had popped up.
---
Finder's Keeper
The ability to find what you seek and keep what you find.
Status: Akashic Gifted, Permanent
Unlocked
Stolen novel; please report.
1 - Find inanimate objects
2 - Find unawaken creatures and people
3 - Find Knowledge
4 - Find awaken creatures and people
---
Then she passed out.
In the darkness the current Ember, looked blankly. She understood what Bird meant. It was pretty obvious when she thought about it. All these memories she was reliving were of how she unlocked the levels of her ability. And each one was tied to a traumatic event.
She laughed. "Are you saying the only way to evolve my ability is to suffer?"
Of course, no one answered her. She sighed. She knew that traumatic events could develop soul abilities but she didn't know much about evolved abilities. Honestly, she had heard of people having evolved abilities but whenever she had managed to take one from someone it had just seemed like a normal ability for her.
In the end, she had realized that if she took an evolved ability it would revert to its level 1 form. The only time that wasn't the case was if the person original form of an ability was its evolved form. Ember had tried studying more about abilities in her tyrant life. She would've been a fool not to do so. The problem came in that in most cases she didn't have time to do the deep research she wanted.
She was either running from the kingdom's knights, fighting, or planning her revenge on this or that person. She also spent most of her time searching for abilities and trying to find the perfect list of abilities to keep.
"Maybe I shouldn't have been so focused on stomping on everyone." She chuckled.
Honestly, she didn't regret the revenge she took. Her regrets were only that she became so consumed by it that she failed to protect the people she cared about.
The room began to grow blurry, indicating she was going to be reliving another memory and she knew what memory would be coming.
"Stop! I get what you are trying to show me. Just...please, I don't want to see anymore."
The wavering of the room stopped and she was left in the darkness. She was a bit surprised it actually stopped. Maybe she could have stopped it all along but she suspected that wasn't the case. While she didn't ask for it to stop verbally before, she definitely thought it and this space did seem to have access to her thoughts.
Still, it could mean she needed to say stop verbally, but since this was all happening in her mind, she wasn't actually speaking out loud anyway. No, it was more likely that the reason she wasn't trapped in another memory was because she had hit upon what she needed to learn from the memories.
They were teaching her how she had unlocked levels of her ability. So, her evolution of power was directly tied to her suffering, but was it simply suffering? She didn't think so. While these moments were stand-outs they weren't the only time she had suffered so it had to be more than that.
Her brow furrowed as she considered each memory she had seen. All of them she had been pushed to a point physically, mentally, and emotionally that almost broke her. So maybe it wasn't suffering but pushing herself past her limits. Did that mean to evolve she had to push beyond her limits?
It made sense to her, especially since abilities were tied to physical, mind, and soul. And she could say that all three were pushed to their limits in each situation she encountered when she leveled up. She grimaced. At the end, that would mean she would basically have to live through torture to grow. It would explain why most Seedlings didn't have evolved abilities and the ones who did gain them might not have survived, since evolved didn't exactly equated to some life-saving ability to get out of trouble.
Which brought the question of how did evolutions work. After meeting the requirements to evolve, did a set ability unlock? She frowned. She didn't think that was exactly true. While her unlocked levels did seem to go in a certain pattern, they also seemed to connect to what she was focused on at the time.
Her first level, she just wanted to prove useful, while her second level she had been wanting to connect with her family. The third, well, that one was an outlier since it seemed to be tied to Bird. Which brought up the question of that outside people could affect her level evolutions. But was that the norm or just a quirk tied to Bird. In the end, she decided to analyze that later.
For her fourth life, she was trying to see if she could pinpoint where the ape was to make her escape. So in all of these lives her level-ups were actively tied to what she was trying to do in some way. Still, she definitely wanted to know where awaken were before her encounter with the ape. Perhaps, she hadn't met the requirements before.
It made her wonder if there was a list of abilities she could access at certain levels and she as assigned whichever ones was closest to what she wanted at the time. She frowned. She didn't like that, since it meant she was essentially going in blind to pick her abilities.
Before Ember could think further on the possibilities the world shimmer around her. Another memory? She thought she was done with those.
Everything changed and she found herself standing in a field. It was dark with moonlight shining down. Several blue lights shimmered in the air, just out of reach, and amidst it all was a tree. Calling it a tree wasn't doing it justice. It was the largest tree she had ever seen. It climbed up into the sky until it was lost among the clouds. Its width was so large that Ember wouldn't have been surprised to find a small town within its depths.
A multitude of colored leaves hung from its branches, range from flaming orange to a seafoam blue. And surrounding the entire tree was a warm glow that reached out to her in the familiar comfort she recognized from her Blessing.
"The Akashic Tree," she whispered.
As she spoke, a branch reached out to her. The branch wrapped around her wrist.
'Ember.'
Her eyes widened at the voice. It vibrated with power but it was also so gentle.
"Yes?"
'Live.'
Then abruptly, she was yanked backwards. Her body flew through the air, flying away from the tree. She tried to reach out but she found herself rushing through a clutter of memories. Pain lashed through her head and she gasped.
Ember opened her eyes.
She was in an unfamiliar room, lying in an unfamiliar bed. There were voices. She groaned as pain throbbed through her eye and into her head.
"Looks like someone finally decided to wake up."
Ember turned and saw a somewhat familiar face. "Knife woman."
The woman laughed. "I prefer Justine."
Ember closed her eyes and breathed. She was finally awake.