He stretched his arms out upon waking up, squirming at the pleasant sensation. He lifted his body out of the box and looked around the room.
Cinera had disappeared somewhere while he slept, leaving Coyotl and him in the feast room.
His stomach felt empty as he hopped out of the crate. The other six sat unmolested in their sleep. He walked over to one and pushed the lid off to begin his early morning meal.
Nearly an entire box of the stuff dumped into his bottomless stomach. With his appetite satiated, he checked on his friend still sleeping in the bottom of his first crate and waddled out of the wooden storage room.
The early morning rays of the sun peaked through the massive leaves overhead leaving most of the village shaded from the direct light. The elves ran around the catwalks that made up their treetop highways.
The same business that he experienced on his first time through the fortress had returned in full force, with significantly more fruit type foods being transported to the lower branches.
He hopped along the sides of the bridges, fearless of the potential drop. They swung side to side as large groups of the elves gave him a wide berth while they scooted along the side of him.
While it was strange to see, he was only grateful that they didn’t step on him by accident.
A loud shriek drew a crowd up ahead, leading him forward and between the feet of the many onlookers.
Some form of bakery sat before him as he reached the front.
“Geeze, I don’t look that bad when I wake up, do I?” The familiar but rough voice of Cinera filled the air.
Egosum hopped forward, grabbing everyone’s attention. He looked ahead and saw the lit bread oven in front of the horrified baker.
“Oh, hey Egosum. You beat me awake, even with this living alarm here.” Her ushanka covered head nodded in the elf’s direction before she stood up and stretched each of her arms independently.
“You need to get out of her oven. She needs to make bread for the feast they have planned.” The matter of fact tone he used got her to vacate the oven quickly, much to the confusion of the onlooking elves that squeezed into the shop.
“Why were you even in there?” The question seemed to catch her off guard.
“Uh, I sometimes forget other types of kinsman exist so I guess it wouldn’t make sense. I was just looking for somewhere to sleep last night and they don’t have many fires around this place with all the trees and stuff.”
“That was when I found the bakery and the nice smoldering coals. Most pleasant nap I have had in a while.” Cinera had a swagger in her steps he had yet to see from her.
“Does this have something to do with getting your mana back after it was sapped by the water?” She giggled at the question.
“No, it was just really comfortable. I have been full on magic since I was put in that cooking pot back at the camp.” Egosum threw his head in her direction to stare at her.
“Wait, you could use magic back then and you didn’t try to get away.”
“Oh yeah, escape in the middle of an encampment of hungry orcs. You know that is a bad idea.” His face heated up in embarrassment before he hopped ahead.
“Well, what are you going to do today while Coyotl and I gorge ourselves on the frogbit?”
“I will head down to the forest floor and help them clear a place for the banquet. I asked the old man if they wanted the help and he seemed happy to accept.” They glanced over to a large group of elves headed off somewhere with food in tow.
“Speak of the devil. I'll head down with them, I think. Have fun with the meal.” With her goodbye said, she scuttled off after the people to head down, leaving him alone on the catwalks.
‘It is kind of strange how comfortable I feel here. The human town was horrifying by comparison.’ He looked around the trees with a strange fondness in his heart.
‘I almost feel like prolonged cooperation would be possible with the elves. I wonder how they would feel about me taking the entire planet over with different types of wetlands. There will still be plenty of trees in the swamps so they probably wouldn’t mind.’
His silent musing trailed off as he found himself back at the storage room he called his temporary home. Coyotl had awoken in the short time he had left, already devouring the newly opened crate.
“Hey man, how are you feeling?” He hopped along, not expecting a response when he was startled from his thoughts
“Oowa.” He glanced over at the frog that was still finishing his latest fruity victim. The response sounded clearer than anything he had said before. It was significantly more intent filled than his other forms of communication.
“Can you understand me?” The quiet question earned him a turned head as he stared right back before going back to eating.
“Hmmm, guess not.” Egosum hopped to another crate to eat his fill, devouring more food in one sitting than he had in his entire life as a tadpole.
His body burned in a way familiar to him from the time he ate the strongest of the souls that visited his soul domain.
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‘So these fruits contain some sort of condensed magic, Qi, or even some kind of dao?’ The mysteries were endless and yet he still had an unrelated goal he needed to achieve.
He needed to clear his understanding of his dao if Pangu was to be believed. Whatever that could possibly mean.
‘If I was able to do it before so easily, what changed since last time?’ His mind raced for a solution. ‘What about my worldview changed so much to affect my understanding of magic?’
As soon as the thoughts formed, he found his answer.
‘It was the new history Cinera tried pushing onto me.’
He had no way of confirming whether one or the other was true.
‘She wouldn’t gain anything from lying to me, would she?’ He shook his head to rid himself of the thought and tried to reason his way through it.
‘I was always taught Quetinctol had traveled around to the other races to discover the magic while she said he learned it from an academy of kinsman. There could have been some flowery language that confused me, after all, what does it really matter how he learned about magic?’
The deeper he dug into his thoughts the stranger it got for him.
‘Is Quetinctol even Quintelopus’ teacher? He probably is. He was born in a young colony and taught by him while he was still a fledgling like what they did before the incident. Goddesses, why wouldn’t he travel to the place his teacher was taught to widen his experiences? It makes sense even.’
The rhetorical question opened up more ideas he had to struggle with.
'If my master didn’t travel and learn about magic from the other races, but rather an established school, then why did their civilization hide in the dark corner of the world and why lie about how it was discovered? She even said wetland magic existed before, so what were we doing there?’
He was told that they had been biding their time and gaining knowledge to eventually take the fight outwards to the other races. His master had gained knowledge from the school and came back to save us from the depraved conditions.
The other amphibians just let us rot in the holes we were dug in for some reason without offering us help beyond knowledge.
‘The secret might be in that dark corner of the world or maybe even the elders still know why. I hope some are still alive to answer my questions.’
His mind buzzed with work, tripping over itself to find the solutions he so desired. Mind tremors racked his brain periodically, leftover side effects of the brain enhancers from intense thinking.
‘Just because my understanding of history is wrong, doesn’t mean my understanding of the swamps is wrong. My master and his disciples did reach unfathomable levels of understanding in magic using the same knowledge they imparted onto us.’
‘I just have a slightly different mission now. Amphibian world domination and finding out what really happened in the past. Seems simple enough.’
Egosum got back to eating the frogbit around him now that his body felt less full. His mood had improved drastically.
‘I didn’t need answers, I just needed resolve to figure those answers out. What kind of croc-shit is that? All I need to understand are the mechanisms of wetlands and I know them well.’
His heart felt light for the lack of a better explanation. He wasn’t so unsure of the future anymore.
The confidence and surety that he understood the world as it should be had left him, but was just as quickly replaced by a new understanding of the world.
He knew that he needed to be the one to find his own answers and make his own place in the world.
The crate was empty by the time he came back to himself.
-
Cinera POV
The group of elves took her along to the forest floor using the same slide they followed up on their trip from the raid.
The foliage around them obscured any sign that they or the entrance to the fortress was there. The guards they passed marked their arrival down and waved them through.
Her clothes permeated with heat from the oven basking throughout the night, giving her enough energy to enjoy the cold forest instead of actively leaking her mana all around.
The massive canopy above blocked light from all sources but some of the few manicured portals to the sky up above. The ground was clear of most large forms of vegetation making her job significantly easier.
The elf that had gotten her clothes guided her where they needed to be cleared of debris, conversing back and forth in common.
“Not much more and we should be done. I am surprised by how versatile your magic is. Ours does little more than shape wood for bows and our homes.” He watched her work with interest.
She gave him a strange look at his comment and finished the spellwork before speaking.
“Yes, I am sure that is all your magic can do. The wars of the South definitely weren’t fought with the wood golems of an arch-elf.” The man gave her a coy smile and shrug before moving on.
‘I swear, amphibians are the only truthful race you'll meet. Maybe the dwarfs are too but that might be only when they are too drunk to remember to lie. They have other problems though, that's for sure. Those greedy bastards.’
The ashen embers smoldered the woody branches that had fallen from above and baked the wet soil to the point of cracking. The wonders of her magic altering the world drew her eyes to the beautiful sight.
‘I wish I could just spend my days casting again. How was I supposed to know that such little lightning would ignite such a large volcano? No one could have seen that coming.’
She threw a few more spells around to finish preparing the earth for the coming festivities and felt something pulse with dense magic from above. None of the elves reacted with anything noticeable to her.
Her senses had never been very good, but when so much mana was being tossed around, it was hard not to tell something was happening
‘It probably came from that weird toad’s area. Wonder what he is doing to cause that? Maybe it's more of that strange magic he showed me. Definitely didn’t learn that from any school I know of.’
The thought of the weird mana usage played back in her mind. It was an enigma on all accounts.
It felt close to mana as she understood it but had far too many characteristics of such a specific niche to be used by someone who can't even cast a real spell yet. A complexity that was often only found in the most convoluted spells of a school.
The volume of mana was ludicrous for someone so young to throw around the way he did and the casualness of its channeling would make it a formidable weapon if it was ever used appropriately.
‘It would serve me well to stick with him for a while. I might even learn something before I have to head back.‘
The thick mana that spread out above abruptly withdrew itself out of her sight, straight to the room Egosum sat inside.
‘I guess I shouldn’t be surprised the young one is so weird. The holdings he came from were strange enough. I wish they weren’t so isolationist before they were destroyed. It would have been cool to see it, though it makes sense they were hit so hard. Who wouldn’t be scared of a warmongering and elitist army knocking on everyone's door? ’
“That's good! Let’s head back to the fortress and get some food.” The roars around them brought her back to reality as the elves spoke in their native tongue.