Egosum leapt underneath a massive cypress in hot pursuit of their target.

A flock of flying fish shook the canopy as they darted away.

The creatures squawked and gurgled in protest while he rushed ahead.

The warm swamp water splashed away as he landed into one of the many small pools covering the floor. Small fish hopped out of his way and flopped around on the ground.

A crackling cloud darted after him, zapping random creatures that got just a little too close.

The last few days of training had done wonders for the pair. They refused to be idle as they waited for the Scar members to return.

Cinera sent out a large ball of super-heated ash to flush out their main target.

The thick bundle of moss shriveled under the spell with ease. They waited and watched while the hiding spot shrunk to nothingness with confused looks plastered to their faces.

They turned to each other before a blinding flash of movement darted from empty space.

“What was that? Can It just blend into nothing now?”

They had been tailing the beast for what felt like a quarter of the day and it wasn’t showing signs of stopping.

Every time they had it cornered, it pulled a new trick from its endless book and disappeared before their very eyes. To call it exhausting and depressing was an understatement.

“Do you want to try the new move out? I feel like it has real potential.”

She shouted her confirmation as they slowly grew closer to the creature once more.

It was little more than a grey blur against the brown mud that carpeted the entire swamp. It quickly grew their ire after missing it easily evaded a wide range attack of theirs and now they desired nothing more than its complete destruction.

Cinera charged a massive cloud of ash up with her lighting doing corkscrews and bouncing off the edges.

Egosum called on his Qi, absorbing as much moisture as he could from the air around the spell.

The lack of water caused the energy tighty contained in the spell to swell like it had five times the amount of mana normally required for a similar result.

The cloud moved deceptively fast despite its massive size. Stray branches were turned into pure carbon as it passed by them with horrific zapping pulses.

The creature knew it was coming as it began to dart side to side in hopes of shaking it before it could reach it. Despite its best efforts, it wasn’t meant to be. The spell was excessively agile and refused to be tricked.

They watched as the cloud got closer and closer to the slowing creature, the exhaustion of the constant chase finally getting to it.

Just before the spell could come into direct contact in ducked into the smallest bush yet and disappeared.

The ash engulfed it whole, blinding them as a constant and concentrated blast of lighting sizzled everything within its range.

‘I don’t even think I could survive that.’

The sheer amount of energy left in the spell was intense for lack of a better word. Slowly, the droning sizzle ended as all of the matter present within its range was suitably disintegrated.

“Do you think it’s dead?”

She asked quizzically.

Egosum scoffed.

“If that didn’t kill it, what could?”

Before she could respond, the noise of the spell reactivating caught them both in surprise.

“Uwwweh!” The shout ended as quickly as it began.

“Definitely dead and probably pure carbon.”

The cloud of pure death fizzled out as Cinera dropped her control. Egosum could still feel the leftover charge on his skin but a few stray zaps did next to nothing to him nowadays.

They crowded around the organism and just stared. A black copy of the animal was gripping its heart with a horrific agony filled expression covering its fishy lips.

“That shit worked well…too well.” He looked at its figure like a science experiment.

Its legs were dominated by thin lobed fins that were longer than its entire torso and its entire body was shaped like a streamline arrow meant to cut through flesh.

“I kind of want to keep it as a memento.” Cinera voiced her morbid interest much to his dismay.

“And you want me to carry it.” She nodded along as his shoulders dropped.

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He reached for the black statue and watched as it disintegrated in his hand like cotton candy in water.

“Awe.”

Within his palm, a light blue core sat sparkling under a rare burst of unfiltered sunlight.

“Nice.” He rolled it around his fingers, dissecting the strange energy makeup of the core with his Qi sight. It was an unfamiliar combination of elements and aspects that he couldn’t place.

Its athleticism and acumen at hiding was undoubtedly aided by the object.

“But the statue.”

She complained as her shoulders fell.

“I’ll make you a copy when we get back. I remember what it looks like pretty well. I’ll even give it this core for a feature. I doubt it would help if I absorbed it anyway.”

She perked up and the pair took off back towards their little kingdom they had carved into the swamp.

Egosum had been thoroughly crushed in the past few days. No matter how far they wandered or how hard they looked, they never found another amphibian that could have joined their coalition.

It was soul crushing to the toad who wanted nothing more than to carry the torch of civilization once more, but he refused to give up.

Lessons from his old master still hung on his mind of the early days of the holdings of Quetulopus.

Constant back and forth was the reality of life for them.

Gain some land, lose some land, plagues, and a myriad of other horrid realities constantly reminded the old salamander that the world was against his people and that remained one of the largest lessons he portrayed to the younger generation.

He would be damned if he would forget it now and give up before ever truly beginning.

“We are back!” Cinera shouted into the small cluster of buildings. The number had increased recently as Egosum had sharpened his skills through continuous practice.

A small head popped up from the ground with a beaming smile glued to her face.

The morning prior, she had given them a horrible fright as the familiar creature popped up looking far different to their memories.

The multicolored caecilian with stripes and contrast had been replaced by a pale imitation of her former self.

According to the creature mentioned, it was a sign of her true final maturity and a reason for her recent desire to always remain buried.

“Welcome back, friends. I am glad you didn’t die. Would you like a worm.” She pulled one of her stubby clawed hands from the mud with a large nightcrawler flailing for freedom.

They looked at it apathetically before the stare became too much for the changed creature.

“Fine, more for me then.” The big morsel disappeared with a long slurp, filling Natan to near bursting in one meal. “Snooty bastards.”

The pair exchanged glances, remembering the pact they had made before leaving.

They would either go hungry or kill something without ruining it.

The problem became readily obvious when the last two days went by in hunger with only a few extra blackened statues blessing the swamp’s landscape.

They went their separate ways and ended up in their own mud huts.

The overcast clouds blocked the sunset in the distance while Egosum shut his eyes and closed the entrance to his abode off from the rest of the world.

Sleep did not come easy to him a the worries for his friend’s life never stopped playing through his mind.

He had hopped, day after day, for the frogs to just how up ready to kill the Baron to no avail.

All he could do now was wait for the next morning to arrive in hopes of their resistance arriving.

The mental aspect of exhaustion turned out to be much worse than the physical. Hs frayed nerves lasted long into the night before finally succumbing.

His soul domain called for him like any other night. A nebulous draw that desperately wanted him to make his way to the familiar domain.

It was far more tempting than he was expecting. The comforting cradle of perfect wetlands energy suited to his every specification was the most intoxicating thing he had experienced.

He caught himself longing for the feeling of home that he often attributed to the eternal vernal pools but had now been turned to his inner soul.

Everything about it was temptation for a creature like him. It was pure him.

Pangu’s message fought through the desires.

He needed to view the soul domain for what it was in its physical sense, how it would manifest in the real world if he were to have his chest eviscerated and the small orb extracted from his corpse.

The temptations lessened as he reasoned with himself. The suction of his mind towards the domain disappeared, leaving him floating in absolute nothingness without a single sense to make any meaning of it.

He had no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or hands to guide him.

No proprioception to align him or a single sign of what he was truly searching for.

Just empty.

That was it.

That was his whole reality.

A blank slate that must have been somewhere between his physical body and his soul.

He couldn’t tell how much time passed or what was even happening when suddenly the world began to rumble.

He fought back the mental sigh. It was already over. He had wasted the night for no results.

Existence rattled at its seams as consciousness retook him.

Senses began to return to him one by one as he was forced into his corporeal form.

The blight filled world tried bragging him back when he caught sight of something.

The faintest of glimmers in the distance. Something he recognized.

The core he saw so long ago but had become strangers with as he grew closer to his domain.

It was hard to tell from a glimpse but the depth it held was unlike any core he had seen in his hands before. Whether it was the worms, the various fish, or random birds.

Nothing could have prepared him for the splendor of himself.

His field of view was pulled away.

His webbed hands clawed at nothingness as he fought to remain inside, if only to stare a little longer into the true him.

Reality was having none of it. It pulled him back sense by sense. Uncaring for his desires.

The core disappeared from his vision and soon his senses. The dark mud hut was the only thing remaining.

It lacked the vibrancy and life that he did.

He willed the entrance open and stumbled out like every part of his being was fast asleep.

In that moment, Egosum was more akin to one of the parasitic zombies right after infestation than a Mage that had just felt an intense desire to worship himself.

He looked around the moonlit swamp with growing apathy.

The water was less healthy, the plants less colorful, the air, less perfectly balanced, and the machinations of the swamp less real.

He hated it.

He hated the place he chose to become the seat of his kingdom.

“Ohhh. I fucked up. I feel like this is something Pangu should have mentioned.”