The world was lacking.

That was the only way Egosum could come to terms with it.

After gazing upon distillate Qi in the shape of his own core, how could he not be repulsed by the sight of a struggling swamp overrun by piscine predators and horrible bugs?

He struggled to leave the warmth of the Qi laden floor of his shitty little hut.

Hours passed by as the sun took hold of the world.

Another sign that the waking world was far worse than he could have ever hoped.

Something like that would never have happened in his domain.

Cinera finally got up from her sleep and stretched out in the warm rays of the glowing mistake.

Her stubby legs carried her forward, flinching back as she caught sight of the miserable looking toad wallowing in his own self-pity.

“What the hell is wrong with you? You look absolutely horrible. What happened?”

He turned his eyes to the salamander, but couldn’t will the rest of his body to face her.

“Nothing happened. Just feeling down.”

She got closer and poked at his side before jerking away like he was a dangerously reactive object.

Egosum didn’t react to the touch, opting to sit perfectly still.

“Something definitely happened. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

She leaned back into his line of sight, waiting for the sad toad to answer.

A few moments of silence passed before he took a deep sigh.

His muscular forearms pushed his body up from the ground and faced the salamander.

“I just feel like everything is shitty. The ground is shitty. The sky is shitty. And worse of all, the swamp is shitty.”

A small pale face popped up to his side.

“Amen brother. Without a man in my life, everything is just a crappy grey tone. There isn’t much joy in living like this.”

He sighed again, dropping to the ground like sitting upright was far too exhausting.

The caecilian extended from her hole and laid on her side like a limp noodle.

Cinera was at a loss for words.

The buzz of some small insects filled the small hut, drawn to the lifeless creatures.

The Egosum of yesterday would have crushed every organism that dared to intrude on his personal space.

She looked down at the pair of depressing sacks of loathing.

‘What the hell do I do when I don’t even know what is wrong with them?’

She turned from them and headed to her oven to think. The warmth of the heated building eased her worries and made coming up with ideas exponentially easier.

She scooped up an insect patty cooking on the same slab she laid on and scarfed it down like it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

‘He said that everything was shitty, but nothing has changed. We have been missing Coyotl for more than a week now and he isn’t one to just give up when his friend disappears. There was something else.’

She felt the mana in her body. The sense had improved by leaps and bounds since traveling with the strange toad.

Growth that she could have never achieved bac at the school if she stayed cooped up in their little echo chamber.

She ran through everything she knew about him.

He cares deeply about his friends. So much so that he willingly threw himself into danger to find Coyotl.

He had a strong desire to rebuild his civilization and he just found the perfect place to do so.

He controlled wetlands mana to scary degrees and can see the very energy that makes up the world

He finds magic and its use interesting.

All of the sudden, these things just went by the wayside.

Gone. Absolutely nothing to let her know what was wrong other than everything was worse than it was only hours before.

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She stopped to think.

How could any of that make life worse?

Memories from Embermount flooded back to her.

She had never seen anything so bad, but something did come to mind.

A state that many of the older students entered in as they did their internships post-graduation.

She remembered walking through the lightning gardens that crackled with the volatile energy of a storm only to be surprised by a gaggle of lounging students soaking in their surroundings like they didn’t have spells to learn or work to do.

It turned out to be a meditative experience. Something that their employers mandated they take part in for world grounding of their perspective.

She had seen a group entering before getting the chance to take part in the ritual and Egosum reminded her of them just to a much more extreme degree.

‘Did he just need to take in dense mana aligned to his energy?’

She threw the idea out.

If the swamp around them wasn’t up to his standards, then nowhere was.

‘Unless.’

She shot up from the slab she was baking away on.

“Egosum, stand up! You are going to follow me!” She spoke with the enthusiasm that she lost long ago during her first year of school.

“Don’t wanna.”

She called forth a spell and coated her hand with a layer of lightning.

He watched it calmly from the floor without a care in the world.

She inched closer and closer to his side, threatening to move him before finally giving in.

“Goddesses. Why are you begging so stubborn?” Lowered her hand and watched as he turned his gaze away from her and grabbed at his arm.

He jumped forward in shock, blasting through the dried mud hut like a dagger fist through drywall.

Crumbled bits of the building flew away as a shower of dust filled the area.

The sheer power contained within the jump blew out the back of the hut as well, leaving the building barely standing.

“Woah.”

Cinera watched the caecilian slink back into her little hole.

“Woah indeed.”

She scuttled out of the place and looked around the sphagnum plains in search of her startled friend.

There was nothing but moss for as far as the eye could see. The fluffy plant swayed in the low wind like a wheat field

“Huh. Guess he went really far.”

A single dot in the far distance caught her eye as it bounced up and down, rapidly growing in size.

“Ah.”

She finally confirmed it was Egosum as his familiar gruff voice broke through the wind.

“You crazy bitch. What were you thinking? No, don’t even answer that. You weren’’t thinking. That was so heavily charged my heart could have stopped. I flew so many damn hops away that I couldn’t even recognize where I was.”

His tirade lasted all the way till he was sitting inf front of her once more.

The toad looked to her like she was the worst villain they had ever faced.

“So? What the hell was that?” The question sat in the air for a few moments as the salamander looked at him with a blank stare.

He could take it anymore.

“Say something!”

She cracked a smile.

“Gotcha ya. Look how much livelier you are now that you are up and moving.”

“Wha-eh-ah-”

He sputtered, unsure of how to respond.

He could still feel the tingle of pure electricity running through his body.

The numbing effect it had on his entire body was the reason he couldn't feel the soreness that undoubtedly dominated his face.

“You can’t be serious.”

A few laughs hit him like a physical assault.

“Well, when you look that sad, I have to do something.”

He began to sag again as he was reminded of the shitiness of everything around him.

Cinera’s hand lit up with the spell once more.

“I can do this at least a dozen more times before I need to rest. Now, talk to me about what Is really wrong, and we can fix it together.”

He took a deep sigh before answering.

“I told you. Everything sucks. Literally everything. I decided to come all the way here to this primordial swamp in hopes of finding the perfect place to restart my civilization and what do I find?”

He let the question simmer in her mind before continuing.

“A desolate swamp with barely any friendly life to converse with but some frogs that can’t even begin to match up to Coyotl. Infinite numbers of hostile fish things. A lost friend. The realization that the swamp fucking blows. Oh yeah, and nothing to show for our time spent here.”

He was animated in his impassioned complaint.

She just let him vent away his frustrations.

‘He isn’t wrong.’

There weren’t many holes to poke in his problems, but that didn’t mean he had to be such a grouch about it.

“The Egosum I have been traveling with would have seen all of those problems and gone out of his way to fix each and every one of them.”

She paused, gesturing to the huts and the swamp that surrounded them.

“We ventured all the way here to find this exact swamp. We pushed through hell to do it and so we did. We lost Coyotl and we had to trek all this way to find where he went, so we did. We had to fight to get here, killing fish and bugs every step of the way, so we did.”

She looked him in the eye.

“You know what I’m saying is true. None of that is the real problem. Something happened to make you hate the world around you and you are refused to tell me the real cause.”

He glared at her persistent nagging figure.

“I told you everything that was wrong. Do I need more reasons than all of that. Everyone I know died, so I went on a journey. My best friend went missing just as we were making it what should have been a paradise and here we are. Lonely without any real guidance.”

She scoffed in his face with her hand bussing with power.

“You are bullshiting me and you know it. I think something happened to you. I think the way you view the world changed and you are struggling to reconcile the world as you wish it and the world as you see it.”

He went silent, unable to deny her claims.

A smug smile crept across her features.

“I’ve seen it before at school. What you need to do is really simple. Make a little sanctuary for yourself with your own power. Back then, the apprentices could go to tailor made areas when they were feeling down and they came away better than before. We don’t have that luxury, so we just need to make our own.”

He perked up at the idea, but the world around them sought to sap it away with its mere present.

“That is exactly what the Egosum I know would have done. Not just mope around like a lost pet in search of a purpose. You already have one, no, you have many. You just said them yourself.”

He let his Qi flood the world.

She was so right.

The sphagnum changed.

The sickly green that dominated the world became just ever so brighter.

The mud welcomed him a bit more than before.

He pushed more Qi out.

Everything began to change.

The swamp that once disappointed him with its mere mediocrity despite its ancient origins was now better than when he arrived.

It was just like his original goal.

Something that he lost sight of once he was shown the potential he held inside of him.

It wasn’t to say that the real world couldn’t meet his expectations. It was to proudly meet them as he put his whole being into it.

The world as he knew it just needed a little help to become what he truly needed it to be.

A home for him and a place for his goals to grow from dreams to reality and it all started with him.