A red hot glow blinded Brand as energy flowed into him. He felt as if he was meditating, as he could feel the energy flowing around his body. It began in his chest and flowed up to his head. He could feel his head then and there was a soft sensation akin to burning. It was strange that such a feeling should ever be soft or nice but it certainly was. He was suddenly aware of everything above his neck. His tongue sat in his mouth and he felt all of it, and then he was conscious of his ears and that he could move them around if he felt so inclined. Then his eyes and he thought about how there was nowhere he could move his eyes to relax them. Then his cheeks, then lips, then chin before it flowed down his neck and into his left arm.

His fingers were alive with sensation. It felt as if someone was stroking his palm and then tracing them down to his fingers and then back up to his shoulder and down his left leg. Brand flexed his foot, feeling it all before the sensation moved to his right leg and his right foot. It travelled back up to his right arm and down that. He opened his hand and closed it and it felt like he was holding an illusory ball of soft flame. The feeling travelled back into his chest and his whole body was alight with power.

And then it was over. But Brand could still feel the latent remnants of that intensity around his whole body. He was still overly aware of all the sensations running through his limbs. Strength. Intensity. Energy. Fire.

Brand felt like seizing the world. Finding the Databeast egg after the win against the Anugent and Flungeon, the fight with the guard captain, and seeing Shingle City in all its majesty had been one wake up call after another. He wanted excitement and power, and he was in just the place to get it. Attuning his element stone had simply been the first glorious step.

“How do you feel?” Asked Professor Dalton.

“I’ve never felt better.” Said Brand, honestly.

“Good. Interesting! I find people react in really quite different ways, it’s always fascinating. I myself almost fell into a trance like state after my first attunement…” Dalton told him.

“Oh wow. Does it differ by element stone type and grade, do you think?” Brand asked.

“Hah! Now you’re thinking like a scientist. If I had the funding I’d recruit you, we always need someone good in the field. Element stone seems to show some level of difference, but actually we find those differences disappear when we control for personality type. You see, certain personality types are more likely to choose certain types of element stones. It’s a fun area of research. No, best we can tell the element stones are simply activating a certain part of the brain. Perhaps the subconscious? Or some level of pure instinct? Not much funding for that either though, I’m afraid.” Said the professor.

“Really? I would’ve thought that studying element stones would be fairly essential.” Brand wondered.

“Certain aspects, yes. The creation and accumulation of element in element stones, now that gets a lot of funding. The psychology for how and why they affect us how they do, not so much. Though I’ve often wondered if there’s some secret key in that that would unlock a door we don’t know that we should be looking for. But that’s just speculation. Shall I give you a full body scan, or would you prefer to keep that private?”

“I’ll take the scan, since I’m here.” Brand said. The professor pressed a button and there was a whirring above as crosshatched green lasers shot down onto him, spinning once. With the machine sufficiently satisfied the lasers disappeared.

“Well! Fairly nice stats, I’d say.” Said Dalton. Brand looked himself.

Name

Brand

Element Stone

Medium-Grade Fire

Attributes

Strength

11

Defense

8

Spirit

6

Wisdom

10

Speed

9

Tolerances

Cosmic

30

Fire

55

Earth

6

Water

1

Wind

1

Electric

2

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“And your fire tolerance is even higher than expected! That’s a damn fine stone. Hold on, 30 cosmic tolerance! That’s on the border between poor and low! Where on Excoria did you get it?” Professor Dalton asked, amazed.

Brand had no idea and he cringed a little as the secrets he didn’t know he had were exposed to others. If he had known about it he would have felt a little more in control of the situation. Now he was lost.

Most element stones accumulated only resistance to their element, as they were found in places full of it. Usually a little earth element would accumulate in a fire stone as they were usually mined in volcanoes, but Brand couldn’t imagine anywhere that had enough fire and cosmic element to imbue the stone with this much energy. The secret behind the origin of Kelvin’s element stones only grew.

“Quite alright if you don’t want to say. I was merely surprised.” Dalton said.

Brand merely smiled with an air of non-committal confusion and shrugged. He didn’t think it was worth revealing how little he knew, especially as he was beginning to suspect that these stones were far more valuable than he’d initially thought, and Kelvin’s parents death must have been inextricably linked to them somehow. The less information that got out the better.

To that end he wondered where Kelvin and Ember had had their stones attuned. Surely not here, else the professor would have recognised his stone and theirs and remarked upon such shocking similarity. The man had been surprised to see a medium-grade fire element stone with significant cosmic energy, as he rightly should be, but three in as many years would have certainly been memorable enough for him to link the two incidents.

The thing that was so surprising about the stone was that most element absorbed by the stone would be converted into fire, and some elemental energy would be lost during that process. But there would be residual amounts of the non-transformed elemental energy that the stone would absorb straight. That was why the stone had a few points in the earth tolerance, as it would have absorbed it from the environment and from the earth Databeasts Brand had defeated.

For a fire stone to absorb that much cosmic element meant that it must have had enormous amounts of cosmic element poured into it. Who would be that wasteful? Cosmic tended to be much more rare than fire, after all. Anyone who could put it in such a high cosmic environment could have simply put it in an even better fire one.

Or was it simply a rare stone, stolen away from the fire/cosmic area from which it had formed in? Brand had never heard of such a place, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.

Either way the stone was immensely valuable. And now that he had it attuned nobody would be able to take it from him.

“Just scanning your vitals… hormonally you look good. Body fat 15%, muscle mass around 50%. I’d say you should eat a fair bit while you’re here and pack on some weight, it’ll give you a bit more to burn through when you’re out.”

“Believe me, I’m gonna eat as much good food as I can before I’m on rations again.”

“Hah, then you’ll want to check out Argyles. Has the best barbecue this side of Excoria. Ravena knows where it is.”

“Sounds amazing.” Brand said, and he meant it. He could already feel his mouth watering at the thought, but held back.

“Hunger spiked! I can see it on the chart.” Dalton laughed. Brand laughed too.

“Moving on. Stress levels high - but I hear you’ve had a stressful few days - hormones seem good, muscle damage is very high in your shoulders and forearms! What on Excoria did you do to them?” The professor exclaimed. That was something Brand had almost forgotten about, the constant ache going numb to him now.

“Well…” He said sheepishly. “I sorta got distracted training, got really lost in it. By the time I refocussed I’d been training for hours and hours with my sword and shield.”

“Well! That’d certainly do it. Though I wouldn’t recommend training like that again for a while. One of my colleagues might be interested in that actually… But I’m sure you’ve more important things to do. Want to get right back out on excursion, I hear?” Dalton said.

“That’s right. As a matter of fact I was wondering if I could ask you something.” Brand said.

“Of course.” The professor replied, still looking over his vitals.

“Well my friends, Kelvin and Ember… I’ve been looking for them. I assume you don’t remember anyone like that? They would have been here around half a year ago?” The professor shook his head so Brand continued. “Well it seems like they were looking into the abandoned laboratory town near Quartz Creek on behalf of some people in Shingle City.”

“Ahh I see. It should be easy to track some people down that knew them then. There’s a couple of dedicated groups that would pay for that. One such is in our very own university. Perhaps I should take you to them after this?” Said Dalton.

“I couldn’t take up too much of your time. You’re already doing this for us after all, besides everything else.” Brand said, wanting to be polite. He rather liked the professor and thought the man might have more important things to do than do Brand favours all day.

“Nonsense, I’ve got a free schedule for at least a little while. Besides, I like doing this sort of lab stuff. Make sure to come back here when you get a Databeast, eh?” The professor winked. “On the subject, I quite like discussing the origin of the old lab town actually. It I used to be quite taken with it back in the day, before realising there were other things I ought to be looking at.”

“What do you think the origin of the ruins is then, professor?” Brand asked.

“Please, Theo is fine. My own ideas on the subject were somewhat unorthodox to tell you the truth. And I haven’t been keeping up closely with the research that has been happening, so I couldn’t tell you if they’ve been further discredited in the time since then. Alright, looks like you’re all up to scratch! Just try and rest your arms and shoulders for a while. There’s a few good spa and massage services tailored towards adventurers actually, they’re a bit expensive and I wouldn’t usually recommend them but honestly your muscles could use the care.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Said Brand. He shrugged a little to feel his shoulders bounce. They really were pretty brutalised.

“Well I’ll just see to your friends and then I’ll get you to the experts. We’ll see if they know the people you’re talking about. By the way, that old lab town tends to be called QBEA.” Said Dalton as he led Brand out the room.

“Kubea?” Brand asked.

“Right. Means Q-B-E-A, but it’s said like kubea. It’s used for ease of communication. There’s a few theories as to what it stands for, but it’s written in a few places around the lab town. We think that’s what it was called.”

“Gotcha.” Brand said, nodding along.

He met with Tommen, Rosie and Ravena and they met him with cheers and congratulations. In all the discussion Brand had almost forgotten - attuning your first element stone was a huge thing! He smiled and thanked them, feeling the power thrumming through him that had almost become second nature. He was a different man to when he’d walked in that room.

Tommen went with Dalton next and Brand chatted to the two girls. He was really growing to like them, despite knowing them for a shorter time than Tommen. They’d asked him how he was feeling, to which he could only answer that he was great. He mentioned the barbecue place, Argyles, to Ravena and she agreed that they should go there to celebrate.

When Tommen came out he was beaming, pleased as anything. Brand was very happy for his friend - he knew that this was the first step on a long journey for Tommen.

Then Rosie came and went, and the reality that she’d really left home and gone on excursion seemed to sink in. She hugged Brand and Tommen and almost seemed close to tears.

Eventually they’d all settled and Professor Dalton went over his conversation with Brand and reiterated that he’d take them to see one of the ruins experts that he knew.

“This man is the head of the X Investigation Society. He’s a good man, passionate. A lot of things to say, so don’t let him distract you too much. And try not to let him get into an argument with you. He’ll be bringing up counterpoints years later.” Chuckled Dalton, clearly reminiscing, as he led them through the storied walls.

“Professor - Theo - you never actually told me what you’d believed about the ruins.” Said Brand. “Just that it was unorthodox.”

“I’ll say.” Chimed in Ravena.

Brand couldn’t wait to hear it now. Tommen and Rosie looked equally interested.

Professor Dalton laughed once more. “Oh yes, right. Well I used to think - and this is just speculation mind you - that the lab there wasn’t native to this world, it wasn’t created here. That it came through with us when we entered Excoria."