Back home, Drim slowly trudged to the mansion, ready for a nap. He happened to catch a glimpse of Feyj and two of their newer residents who had just joined a few weeks ago. It was obvious from just a glance that Feyj was hitting on them, and that they were clearly uncomfortable. Damn, didn’t we warn everyone to not give him the time of day? Drim was tired, but he couldn’t just ignore this.
He approached the group, thinking of some random excuse to pull Feyj away. This incarnation of him had been such a headache. He had no interest in helping others, or improving himself, or doing literally anything besides trying to get into the pants of… well, anyone. Hopefully, he hadn’t been successful, but Drim didn’t really want to think about it.
If this had been the version of Feyj that they first met, he never would have been allowed into their group. Drim could only hope that the rest of Feyj’s life would blow by and that the next incarnation would be someone they could work with once more.
While Drim was too tired to do the math right now, Feyj was on the upper end of middle-aged, approaching senior citizenry at the moment. Well, Feyj always looked good for his age, so it was possible he’d actually passed the line already. Regardless, it made it quite disturbing that he was trying to seduce those multiple decades younger than him.
Drim approached the creeper from behind, but before he could say anything, he noticed several dots of light on Feyj’s back. His Curse was still on, which should have showed him the energy of life swirling around the older man, but it was different on Feyj for some reason.
Each dot of light was actually a perfectly shaped flame, and then Drim remembered Feyj’s Curse Mark. It consisted of several small embers of candlelight—105 to be exact. Each mark represented one day he’d live until he reached the maximum when he’d be reborn.
What Drim was seeing now was the exact inverse of the Curse Mark. On the spots of his back that should still be blank skin, Drim could now see the remaining flames glowing in the form of Feyj’s life energy.
Drim held out his hand and absorbed one of the flames. The man immediately grew up. Even at his old age, a year’s difference was still obvious when viewed back to back.
“The heck did you just do?!” Feyj whirled around in confusion, apparently able to feel the difference in age.
The two he’d been talking to recognized this as their moment to escape and immediately darted in the other direction. “Don’t let him corner you next time!” Drim called after them with a future warning.
“Sorry, Feyj,” he half heartedly apologized. “I was testing out the changes in my Curse, and you were different for whatever reason.”
“Different how?” Drim took a moment to explain everything that had happened, surprised that Feyj was even interested enough to take a moment to listen. Normally, this incarnation would run off when something didn’t immediately intrigue him. “Interesting,” Feyj actually thought about it for a while. “Can I be honest about something for a moment?”
“Of course,” Drim would happily engage this side of his friend any time, hoping it to be a glimmer of hope that his regular personality could still be reached.
“I actually don’t like this incarnation of myself. Frankly, my libido has been decreasing rapidly the past ten days or so, but it’s still a nuisance, so I can’t help myself at times. When you aged me just now, it decreased even further. So if you can continue to age me, I’d like you to do so until it reaches a normal level and I can get back to my usual routine.”
“Wow, I’m amazed you even admitted you had a problem,” Drim was beyond surprised.
“Pssht, I don’t have a problem, and how dar—” this incarnation's unrelenting pride started to flare up. Before he could rescind his request, Drim decided to age him a few more years. He absorbed ten more flames from Feyj’s back and then his seniority really started to show.
“Thank you, I’m starting to feel like my old self again,” the old man was grateful, but still looked at the back of his hands with disappointment. “Actually… Could you just age me out of this life? I’ve never enjoyed the last few decades of each cycle. Once you reach a certain point, life just becomes more burdensome with each passing day. It doesn’t mean there aren't experiences left to enjoy, but I’d just rather start anew.”
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“Are you sure?” Drim was a bit concerned, even though he’d be happy to be rid of this incarnation. “Each version of you is that one’s only life to live. You’ll be reborn as someone completely new again, and this life will be cut short. Well, shorter than it has been already.”
“Let’s be real,” Feyj huffed at the idea. “If this version of myself lived a regular human’s lifespan, they would have been killed a long time ago by someone’s jealous lover.”
“Alright then,” Drim pulled out his tablet to confirm something. “Tize is next on the list to take care of you as a baby. He’s in the compound right now, so let’s go find him. I doubt he’ll mind watching you a bit early, and he’ll actually raise you right this time. I’m not against doing this in the future, but for now, we should let you grow up normally until we can run some tests. We learned very recently, after all, how important those early developmental years are.”
The pair went off to find Tize so that Drim could shirk the responsibility of being Feyj’s caretaker. After explaining the situation, Drim absorbed the last remaining flames of Feyj’s current life. When the last light was extinguished, the ancient man vanished completely. Drim worried for a moment that Feyj had been absorbed out of existence. But no, he’d just shrunk so much into his clothes that he was out of sight.
The new baby was another boy that was a bit plumper than the past incarnations. His hair was also absurdly curly. It’d probably be something that this version of Feyj would struggle to manage his entire life, but it went to show just how different all these rebirths could be.
◆◆◆
Since the experience with Feyj had only been Drim absorbing life energy, he actually no longer felt the need to take a nap. Instead, there were still a few tests he wanted to run before he could let himself relax.
Drim had done plenty of testing already on how his newly ascended Curse would affect both humans and Fiends alike, but he hadn’t tried it out on plant life at all, so he headed to their private garden behind their mansion. The first step, of course, was to observe the plants with his burning eyes. If there was nothing to see to begin with, then there probably wasn’t much he could do by adding the energy of life.
To his surprise, though, each plant had a very weak flame. It was like his garden had turned into a field of fireflies. Drim plucked a peach that had grown in one of the trees. Even though it had been cut off from its life-giving source, the flame remained.
He took a bite, and the flame dwindled slightly, vanishing into his own body. Maybe this meant there was something more to food being sustenance needed to survive. Or maybe this was his Curse’s way of representing the peach’s life giving properties as an allegory for nutrition.
Drim imbued a little bit of life energy into the remaining peach, but it didn’t really take. The flame had grown slightly, but was stupidly unproportional to the energy he’d given it. He took another bite and was underwhelmed. It tasted virtually the same, but perhaps it was a bit more filling. Or maybe his mind was just making that up to give the feeling that something had changed.
After testing with various other plants to underwhelming results, Drim moved on to plants of his own making. To keep things consistent, he made a new peach tree from scratch with his nature energy. Like just about everything else he made, it was discolored. In an ironic twist, the leaves were actually peach colored, but the peaches themselves were tinted blue.
Now that he could see the hidden truth, he discovered that the tree he made had no life energy in it at all—not the trunk, not the leaves, not the fruit. Still, for a control, Drim took a bite of the peach despite knowing it would be flavorless. Since he’d been back to Ledmer recently, it gave him a good comparison of how similar this peach was to the fruit on that island.
He was unsure if the life energy would take, but the peach drank it up greedily. In fact, unlike a real peach, it absorbed well past what the real fruit could contain—like it had become a vessel of pure life.
Another bite and Drim was blown away. While the texture remained the same, it was now the most delicious peach he’d ever tasted—bursting with flavor to the point that it was almost overwhelming. Now it reminded him of the balls that Pox produced, the way those enhanced flavor to another level. Each bite also gave him a burst of energy, like he was absorbing life straight from another person.
This could prove a more friendly way to transfer energy into others. They could eat something nice instead of Drim having to touch them directly. But there was something weird about that whole cycle that prodded at Drim’s morals somewhat.
In a way, this was turning human life into edible food. Wouldn’t that basically be considered cannibalism? He shook his head, trying to forget the notion, deciding it best to never repeat it to anyone. Still, it would be a hindrance in solving the issues with world hunger, since it would require a sustainable source of willing life to pass along to others.
Content with these tests so far, there was still one more thing he wanted to try.
What if I combine the two energies together from the very beginning?
Drim made a nature portal with his left hand and imbued life into his right. He clasped them together and both sources of energy were drained out of him without his control. In an instant, he’d lost a good gap of both, feeling weak, but he couldn’t stop the flow. The energies started to merge—attacking each other, while at the same time forging themselves into something new.
He then screamed.