A gloved hand hung in the air as a bright ashen colored circle flared to life. With each second that passed, another level of complexity entered the formula.
Strange shapes overlapped the circle until a small point at the very center was the only part unchanged by their additions.
The moving parts of the magic locked into place all at once, glowing a vibrant grey as it finally came fully to life.
A large cloud of ash billowed from the small hole coating a size ten times Cinera’s length in the dense material. A blast of heat poured from the area, singeing the closest grass and sucking the life from the roots.
“That was a really good one, I think if I can practice it a few hundred more times I can lace lightning into the cloud The energy is already there. It is just missing a little something.” She lowered her hand to the ground and admired her handy work.
The elves around her stared in awe at the sudden incursion of magic. A small group formed to watch it sizzle out of existence.
“That was definitely amazing to watch, but why are they all freaking out? Elves have magic too, don’t they?” Egosum had his fun ruined as the group around them grew larger to watch the magic’s dying breaths sitting off his view of the spectacle.
“Not any magic like this. Their magic lies in tree shaping and enhancing. Even their bows are living trees that channel their magic energy into every shot and the houses they live in are modified to allow for a comfortable existence using the same magic.” Cinera gave him a strange look as he spoke to her.
“Why are you staring at me like that? I wasn’t ever taught that stuff.” His face warmed with embarrassment at the topic.
“Learning about all other races' magic is kind of the whole point of the school. It gives a good perspective on our own source of magic. We might have been using it for thousands of years, but that doesn’t mean we can’t glean something from different magic.” She lectured him on the importance of a varied knowledge base before he froze in thought.
“Hold on. What do you mean by thousands of years? Quetinctol is only a few hundred years old, your history is kind of confusing.” Egosum leaned into her side to ask her with some privacy from the onlookers.
“Yeah, thousands of years according to the school. They have archives of the last five hundred years stored deep underground. Quetinctol did an apprenticeship there when he was young according to them. They have a whole statue for him as a successful alumnus. He learned from some of the best mages of the time.” His face blanked at the news as his mind went haywire.
‘Quetinctol discovered amphibian magic himself. He couldn’t have learned it from another kinsman, let alone a school of them.
“But Quetinctol founded the whole amphibian wetland magic system. What did he even learn back then? This isn’t making much sense.” She looked at him in confusion. A clear flaw was present in one of their understandings and it caused no small amount of fear in Egosum that he was obviously the least confident one.
“I think you have your history a little backwards. Amphibians have had various forms of magic since our creation. Even Quetinctol learned his wetland magic from the utmost authority on the subject back then. Chantico I think. Quetulopus even has a statue in Embermount for the same reason Quetinctol does.” The bombshells continued to drop on Egosum’s view of the world.
He sat around without making a noise for a few minutes as Cinera tried to grab his attention to no avail. He flinched a couple of times in pain as mind tremors assaulted him for the first time since leaving the vernal pools.
‘The great masters of my civilization must have spread magic to the school she spoke of, and they adapted history to fit their needs.’
His entire understanding of the greatness of his civilization was overturned in only a matter of a few sentences. His mind raced for explanations that he struggled to conjure up.
With him frozen in space, there was nothing for Cinera to do but sit and wait for him to come back to reality.
She poked him several times in hopes of him moving or waking up.
‘I refuse to be the crazy one here. She must have been taught some propaganda for some reason, so that history must be fake.’
The encampment around him was razed to the ground and the elves entered formation in preparation to leave. The old elf came over and collected the two amphibians at her request before leaving.
He sat still the entire time, unmoving despite all of the changing scenery around them. The small group of amphibians garnishing the old elf’s shoulder increased by one more as they collected Coyotl on their way out and proceeded back to the tree-top fortress.
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‘I can’t have been lied to my entire life, regardless of how short It has been. There must be some sort of mistake somewhere. She must be wrong. I refuse to accept this.’
A light touch to his back drew him from his internal and looping musings.
“What?! Oh.” He looked around and found himself in a room with eight crates of frogbit and his two friends. Coyotl touched his back like when they first met, bringing him back to the land of the living.
“You’re finally back with us? That was pretty weird man. Haven't seen someone so deep in thought since I left the school. What were you thinking about?” She walked over to him to check out his condition.
“I…I… Nothing. It wasn’t anything. Just a little confused is all. Um, would you like to join us in the feast? It will probably take a few days to eat, but I am sure they would give us the time with me saving the prince and princess.”
She glanced over to the frogbit in question and cringed slightly.
“I think I will have to pass. Pretty sure that stuff is poison if you aren’t closely aligned with water. Kind of scary to even think about what it would do to me.” She turned and walked over to a corner of the wooden hall they were in to rest her eyes.
“Suit yourself.” He looked back to the open crates and found Coyotl already gorging himself on one.
He hopped up to a container and began his own feast, devouring an entire crate in a matter of a few hours.
The plump fruits seemed to fall into the bottomless pit of his stomach, piling up effortlessly despite the sheer mass he ingested.
The pleasant feeling of fullness, not dissimilar to the time he devoured some souls proceeded to overtake him. He sat at the bottom of the crate in uncertainty of what the future held for him. The thoughts allowed him to drift off into sleep after the tiresome day.
-
“Hahahahah. I told you that shit sounded like propaganda.” The boisterous laughter of a pile of dirt welcomed him to his soul domain.
“Just shut up. I am still trying to figure out what's going on, okay?” Egosum felt defeated despite his first real win in combat. It soured any good mood he might have had at one point.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. It’s hard having everything you thought you knew for a fact get destroyed by some random person you just met, and you can’t even really argue cause or how little experience you really have. That just sucks.” Pangu rubbed as much salt in his wounds as possible.
“I said shut up. I don’t even want to hear it.”
“Alright. I will leave it alone for now but don’t think it's over. Now, the really important stuff I wanted to talk about. I wanted to tell you how impressed I was by how much progress you made.” The turn of the conversation stole his attention away from ignoring the annoying soul soil.
“What are you even talking about?” The dejected expression did little to change his new master’s tone.
“Well, you are already strong enough to incorporate your first sense into your soul domain.”
“Is sight not a sense? I mean look around us. I can see the forms of plants and all of the other components of a swamp nearby.” The confused response earned him a few seconds of silence from Pangu as he thought on the question.
“You shouldn’t really think about the stuff you see in here as being gathered from a sense. It is more of a manifestation of your memories. It is also why I was so confused when I got here and why I ended up melding with the dirt.” His tone slowly got less and less energetic as he arrived at his point of embarrassment.
“Whatever. Just explain to me how I add in a sense.” The dejected voice finally reached the dirt's hearing.
“Man, you are a lot less fun when you are sad. You should stop feeling so bad for yourself, after all, you aren’t a patch of dirt like me. That must count for something.” The lack of reaction caused him to pause for a second before continuing.
“Okay then, um, well I hope you remember how you almost did it before because it is pretty much the same thing but specifically trying to isolate it to the first sense of sight.”
Egosum closed his eyes and thought about the aspects of a swamp. How he would define the sights in a swamp and what the unseen parts of the swamp would look like if they were visible to him.
“Hmmm. That isn’t quite right. I feel like you aren’t really here in the moment, almost like you are completely preoccupied….. This won’t work. Think about the stuff that is bothering you and come back later. I should be able to help you then.”
The terse comment and quick dismissal immediately angered him. What had he done to earn such a quick repudiation?
“Just tell me what to do. It wasn’t that hard before. Maybe if you actually told me what I was struggling with, I would be able to achieve something.” His anger boiled inside him.
“That is the issue. If it was easier before, that means your understanding of your dao was shaken fiercely. Trying to lay a sense into it now would ruin the foundations of all other senses. You can’t build an empire on the backs of weak peasants. The same is true for the condensation realm.”
“Then what do I do to fix it then if you know so much?”
The silence caused his ears to ache in suspense. He was rapidly exhausting himself for some unknown reason trying to understand what was wrong. He felt lost in his own soul domain despite not having moved since he arrived.
“You need to understand why you feel so unsure and consolidate your worldview that caused your dao to falter. Without that, you don’t have much future in cultivation. I would try fixing your understanding of magic and what that means to your civilization.” The strange accuracy of his words caused Egosum to pause.
“Hold on. How often are you watching what I am doing through my eyes? I feel like you have a lot of information.” The question seemed to catch the dirt off guard, causing him to stutter.
“I…I… constantly?” Egosum just stared at the patch of ground down as the seconds ticked by.
“What? It is really boring here. There is literally nothing for me to do but watch. Hey, I thought that fight with the orc was pretty cool. I mean the ending was embarrassing, but sometimes things just play out that way. You don't always end things with a flourish of weapons.”
He stayed silent as he waited for the world to flicker back to reality.