Drim stared at his empty hand as he lay in bed. His friends had all already had a day to figure out the changes to their powers while he’d been left in the dust. Kada had been—literally—moving mountains, Xard had been destroying their home and terrorizing criminals, and Phon, well she hadn’t been doing much externally, but her privacy invasion had reached a record high.
While they’d all been causing chaos and a headache for others, he couldn’t help but be envious. Yesterday had been entirely meetings, so he hadn’t had the chance to even think about his Curse. When had his life become mostly meetings?
Ahvra wanted to run tests. Farian wanted to run different tests. Nathym wanted to meet about potential changes to Project Fiendless. Chorus wanted to meet about how to handle the whole voice thing.
At least that meeting had interesting results. The Fiends For Hire ended up taking responsibility for the incident. While they were, in fact, partially responsible, they changed their narrative to them testing a new form of broadcasting tech.
The surprising part was the follow up by the Central Peace. A few hours later, they released their own statement corroborating the fake news the Fiends For Hire delivered. It seemed they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shift blame. At least someone there seemed to share the same sense. It was easier to blame an existing factor, even if the idea was bizarre, than to admit that the inexplicable and uncontrollable had happened.
What’s sad is that it worked. Commotion died down around the world, the masses content with this lie, whether they had other suspicions or not. Of course, some still doubted the news, but they were mostly drowned out by new theories centered around deducing the Fiends For Hire’s plans.
With all that out of the way, though, Drim now finally had time to figure this zjik out. He’d made sure his calendar was free for the entire day. While he didn’t doubt that some emergency would find him, he’d do his best to avoid getting sucked into the problems of others for now.
He had never cared about being strong, but he needed to at least understand his power. His Curse up until now had become such an integral part of his life that he wasn’t sure he could live without it anymore. What the heck did this energy even do, though?
A green fire ignited in Drim’s hand. It was different from his portals that channeled his nature energy. Those never actually touched his body, just hovered close by. This was actually emanating from his hand, enveloping it. He messed around with it a while, and he could expand it, coating his entire arm.
The fire had no actual heat, and it didn’t do anything to his clothes or any other surroundings. But the energy was weird. It felt like it was part of him more than his nature energy ever did. That always felt like a separate tank that was filled and drawn from. This felt like it was his very soul.
Something Phon had brought up was his eyes burning, so Drim slumped out of bed and headed into the bathroom. In front of the mirror, he summoned the fire again, but nothing happened to his eyes. No, that had been different. He’d been seeing the fire on other people somehow. It wasn’t something that had triggered ever since their return.
Drim tried to remember that feeling and he stared at himself in the mirror. Suddenly, he was ablaze, green fire lapping over every inch of his body. This included his eyes, and now he could see what Phon had seen. That was his focus first, being able to see the fire without his own eyes burning. It took longer than he liked, but he eventually got it down to a light ember that most wouldn’t notice.
What was weird, though, was that only his fire was green, and it was the same fire he could summon to his hand. That would make him think it was his aura, since apparently that was green as well as Phon had told it. But for the other three, their fire had been red. Drim momentarily lurked near his window and stared outside at the compound. A few residents were walking by and the fire around them was red as well.
Another thing Drim had noticed when looking in the mirror was that the tips of his hair glowed green when summoning the energy around his hand. It didn’t appear when he was just looking at the energy of others, so he could at least peep without getting caught. But it seemed that they couldn’t hide when they were using their new abilities.
The tips of Phon’s hair had glowed purple when she was looking at something to do with her ascended Curse, and he’d seen Xard’s glow gold yesterday when he saw him walking around the compound. Drim hadn’t seen Kada use hers yet, but had to assume silver tips were in her future.
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It seemed nothing else could be gleaned just from observation, so Drim tried using the fire on himself. Nothing happened as he expected. If the energy was coming from him, obviously it wouldn’t have any effect on him. He’d reached the limit of what he could figure out cooped up in his room, so he headed downstairs to start his day.
Mallea was ready for him of course, setting his meal down at the table the moment he entered the room. Her fire was red just like everyone else's. As usual, she was about to leave to handle her other duties, but Drim stopped her. “Can I ask for your help for a few minutes, Mallea?”
She was, of course, delighted, and immediately sent a text to Crucion to pass along her work load, all without knowing what she was signing up for. “So what do I need to do?” Mallea was only more confused when Drim had asked her to sit down next to him.
“Take my hand,” Drim held it out, which only led to a more confused look, but she still complied without hesitation. She almost instinctively pulled her hand away when the green fire appeared, but left it still when there was no pain or heat. The small bit of fire on Drim’s hand was sucked into Mallea’s, turning red in the process before it vanished.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Pretty good, actually,” her mood had lifted. “I feel like I have a lot more energy, and my feet don’t feel as sore anymore. How strange.” There was a difference only Drim could see too. Her fire had grown in size and was burning a bit brighter. Just that small bit of his fire that he had given her had caused hers to flare so much, acting like kindling.
“Interesting, I actually feel a touch more tired after that,” Drim reported. “But barely more than I would after a short walk.”
“Okay, I’m going to try the reverse. Let me know if you get uncomfortable,” Drim prepared to use it again. He actually hadn’t tried to absorb the fire from anyone yet, but his instincts told him that it would work virtually the same as it would with plants and nature energy.
Drim tried to take as little as he could, but even that turned out to be too much. Mallea immediately keeled over, falling out of the chair and crashed to the floor. The fire around her body had weakened immensely. It didn’t appear to be in danger of burning out, but it was a fraction of the size it once was. One thing to note, though, was that the fire immediately began to grow again, replenishing itself very slowly, but it seemed that it would inevitably reach its original size with time.
Drim’s own fatigue had recovered, and he was back to feeling great, but the amount he gained didn’t scale with how much he’d taken from Mallea. Not wanting to leave her like this, he imbued a new flame from his body into her. Once again, it acted like a spark, and her fire was roaring again in moments.
Mallea shot up from the floor, straightening her clothes, and acting like nothing had happened—her professional persona once again on full display. Maybe she hadn’t been the best candidate to try this out with. It was easy to forget due to her strange ability and insane work ethic, but Mallea was still just a human with a human constitution. It’d be too dangerous to continue performing experiments on her or any other human for that matter.
He needed to find a Fiend.
Drim apologized and thanked Mallea for her assistance. She didn’t look too perturbed since he’d provided her with a burst of energy in the end.
Once outside the mansion, Drim immediately began scanning for a willing volunteer. He’d also settle for a slacking employee with nothing better to do. Occasionally, he actually had to act like the boss. Of course, he could call up one of his friends and they’d respond and volunteer immediately. However, he was afraid someone too eager would be more likely to not fully share what was happening to them and skew the results.
Drim’s eyes landed on Rezin who was carrying a stack of old board games as he walked to the front gate. This was odd for two reasons. One, Drim’s eyes never just randomly landed on Rezin without reason. Maybe being able to see the fire around him had some effect on Rezin’s Curse. And two, Rezin’s fire was outstandingly strong—second only to Drim’s own fire. Whatever this energy was, Rezin had a lot of it.
“Hey Rezin,” Drim appeared to have startled the boy who immediately hid his face behind the stack of board games. He probably wasn’t expecting anyone to notice, let alone approach him.
“Uhh, uhhh, h-hello Drim,” Rezin stammered. “What’s up?”
Drim explained the situation to him and Rezin agreed to the experiments. They repeated the same tests that Drim had just performed with Mallea to wildly different results. Giving Rezin energy, even to the point that Drim was starting to feel a bit faint, did basically nothing for him. His fire never grew, and his own feeling never really changed.
For the inverse, draining the energy from him barely seemed to deplete it all. Drim topped himself up fully, and even got a similar ugly feeling to when he absorbed too much nature energy at once when he tried to push beyond his limit. Though it was more of a tense strain on his body rather than nausea.
“Would you like to come to the facility with me?” Rezin suddenly proposed. “That’s where I was headed. If you can give energy to people that makes them feel better, I bet the patients there would really love it.”
Drim hadn’t planned to go so far for his testing, but it was an intriguing idea that he hadn’t considered. If his power was related to a person’s constitution, then those with weaker ones may stand to benefit more from it. At the very least, he wanted to verify that those with weaker constitutions would have weaker flames as he expected.