I have vision, now I need results.

I could address the red plaguing the entire stump, but I think that would just seal it up. It would make Rav more comfortable, stop the bleeding, prevent future infection, but make the eventual healing of his hand (if it’s possible) more difficult. There are large lines of yellow-green interspersed in the red. They never go very deep, except where flesh is clearly missing. Many of the yellow-green lights follow an almost fang-like shape… like a bite. Animal bites generally cause infection via saliva and the introduction of foreign bodies… so maybe that?

Tentative: yellow-green means infection/foreign contaminant.

There isn’t any purple like there was for me, which is odd. There is, however, a very telling blue light that extends about an inch further past the stump.

…

Missing tissue?

Maybe it’s a template? The body knows what was lost and wants it back, signified by blue light?

An interesting thought, but ultimately null because my Energy refuses to move past the red wall where the stump ends.

My first thought is to blame the red, and say ‘if I healed it, I could go further’ but further consideration makes me unsure. There isn’t any resistance around the other red, Energy can pass easily through it, so why would it be true here? No, I think the lack of body there is the issue. I can’t move my Energy through air, and that’s all that’s there.

Time slips by as I wonder what the answer is. There clearly is one, there wouldn’t be a blue light otherwise. I mean, maybe it means something totally different, but my intuition says I’m onto something. If that intuition is the game offering me guidance, perfect. If it’s just my gut… that’s right sometimes too.

No, this has to be it. I know I’m right. I just… don’t… know how.

I pull out of the Energetic view. The scene has changed slightly since I last looked, and now Nate is standing very close, watching me intently. Dean is sitting nearby on a hunk of wood, eyeing me warily. To be expected, honestly. Rav looks… like he’s in a trance. It’s amazing, he must be barely breathing to be that still.

Nate addresses me: “Can you heal him?”

I pause for a second before answering. Can’t be too honest, can’t be too negative.

“I… don’t know. I’m close to figuring it out, but there’s something missing. I know I’ll figure it out, but… I don’t know when.” I sigh, looking down.

Then Nate says something I don’t expect: “I think I can help… *heal Rav’s hand*.”

The mental equivalent of a *wham* sound rings through my skull, and a pounding headache emerges.

I fail to keep in a small grunt of pain as the sensation washes over me for a moment before receding.

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But it isn’t just pain… it’s also clarity. There’s a connection I hadn’t made. Energy is only a piece of the puzzle, not the whole thing. Energy, Mana, Power… these are all part of this new system that’s in place. There’s no way they could be independent. Rav could cast spells; that means he must have been able to show some exterior sign of it. Meanwhile my attempts at using Energy outside something I’m in direct contact with have been fruitless. Additionally, he only just got his powers when the game gave them to him, so he must be a novice like me, meaning… exterior control came naturally to him, just like interior control with Energy came easily to me.

Well… ‘easily’, but generally the same.

And then there’s Power. Something Rav and I have in common. There was a Power cost for rebuilding and upgrading our bodies and for acquiring new abilities. Where did the muscle mass come from? The strength? Density? Something had to be created, and if the stat boosts are any indication, this wasn’t just my body being re-molded… It was growing, becoming something more. Where else could that addition have come from than the Power I put in to make it happen?

Energy is the self, Mana is the fuel, and Power is the clay. It gives shape, but that shape is dead.

If I shape a dead hand from Power, and give it life with Energy, it just needs to be connected to its new owner and…

…

And I guess we’ll see.

Rav, I hope you have some Power lying around, cause I sure don’t.

I dive right back in, praying that my mental model is correct.

My view is just as I left it, but there’s an odd aura around my body. Maybe it’s related to the clarity I got when Nate ordered me around… That was also unusual, now that I think about it, but unimportant right now.

I reach through my connection with Rav and feel around in him. I never noticed Power within myself, but it must be somewhere, right? I’m out right now, otherwise I’d figure it out internally first, but Rav might have some. He probably got a bunch from the fight but has been too out of it to use any.

Hopefully.

I press my Energy up his arm and slowly gain vision of the rest of him. I don’t see any damage or new colors as I go, which is good, and before long I reach the center of his chest. Here I find gold. Literally. There’s a large, golden mass in the direct center of his sternum. It looks exactly like the chunk I found buried in the hillside all that time ago. The chunk of pure Power.

Jackpot.

The act of moving it is only a slight challenge. It resists being moved all at once, but I can wrest small pieces off by rubbing tendrils of my Energy against it. The green tendrils become golden, but don’t seem to take on the domination quality, more like they’re just covered in Power and it masks their color. I set up a cycle of Energy flowing to the Power source and back to the stump, over and over, building up power in the blue section. As the Power accumulates to a noticeable amount, which takes for-god damn- ever, my residual, green Energy moves easily into the space. The tendrils flash brightly and disappear, leaving blank body space behind! The outline of Rav’s stump extended slightly, and the blue light didn’t change in size, but moved out to signify opportunity for more growth.

Only a matter of time.

----

I’ve been at this for such a long time (I can never tell exactly in my Energetic view) that I’ve used almost the entirety of the Energy stockpile I’d placed in him, and the supply of Power is getting slower. I have to push more and more Energy into him just to keep the rate up. It’s difficult work. I’m starting to feel the strain, both on my body through the lost Energy, and on my mind from having to micromanage the process. The thing that keeps me going is my undeniable progress towards creating a new hand. There’s a wrist structure, half a palm, and a thumb is starting to appear. The good news is that I can move faster on the smaller biomass sections like the fingers.

The… more questionable news is that I don’t know if the result will be… good. Forget matching skin color, I don’t even know if it’ll look human.

…

Oh well.

It’ll be fine.