The last thing I remembered was a flash of light. No, that’s not quite right, a Flash of Light is more like it. A blinding burst of a Primordial Force. So familiar and yet so foreign. I tried to recall something, anything else, but the only image that came up was a Void. Pretty similar to what surrounded me at the moment, now that I think about it.

I tried to move, even though I wasn’t sure I should be able to. I couldn’t feel my eyes, hands, legs, whatever limb I remembered possible. Nothing. Just a lonely consciousness floating in a Void of black. I once again skimmed through whatever memories I had.

Excluding The Flash, I appeared to be a what mortals call a ‘blank slate’. Briefly, I wondered how did I have such knowledge. And why ‘mortals’. I dove into my memories with renewed vigor, since there wasn’t much else to do. If I called others mortal, did it mean that I was immortal. That made sense, so I decided to stick with this hypothesis for now.

The ‘bank slate’ led me to uncover that I had some seemingly basic information already known to me. Apparently, all this time I’ve been thinking in Etherias, Language of Foundations. I paused for a second before digging further. After some time, which was a pretty fascinating concept in my opinion, I finally summarized whatever knowledge I had.

First of all, I knew Etherias, Language of Foundations, also known as the Tongue of Gods and Runed Speech. A bunch of fancy-sounding names, which nevertheless revealed that I had some sort of relation to Gods. Interesting information with no value to my current situation except for basic knowledge of terms and definitions, so I discarded it and stored for later.

Next piece of knowledge that I uncovered was about the Mortal World. Nothing about history, simply general information, like the number of parallel dimensions, bound planes of reality and things like races inhabiting it. Not a shred of practical knowledge though, I had no idea of their culture, if any, or their relations with each other. Not even their appearance, I just knew of their existence. Once again, that was useless information, which I stored for later.

Fortunately, the last bit was at least partially relevant. It too leaned on side of basic knowledge, but this time it concerned The Flash. Finally, something of value. The images my memory associated with The Flash were scare but informative. Numerous shady silhouettes spread across an extremely familiar Void, flinging something at each other. These something included clumps of various colors, invisible waves that seemed to distort the space around them and lastly The Flash.

What was even more curious, was that ‘I’ too was participating. I didn’t quite see what I looked like but greenish brown balls of light and tendrils were plentiful in ‘my’ surroundings. What picked my interest the most, the one shade who was targeted much, much more often than the others. In fact, I am pretty sure that the green in purple shade was the main focus of all my memories before The Flash.

Well, forgetting about that for a moment, now that I think about it, all shades had some sort of color, discerning them from the surrounding Void. Excluding ‘my’ greenish brown and the other shades greenish purple, there were burst of all colors I could think of. There must’ve been a deeper meaning to that, though that was mostly unimportant at the moment.

Unimportant because I was suddenly pulled out of my thoughts, and quite literally at that. I felt a pull, dragging me in some general direction. I wasn’t sure which since it wasn’t simple to orient in the Void, but for now l assumed it was down. As I was moving, I entertained the thought of struggling against it, but quickly dismissed it. It was the first thing to happen to me from the moment I ‘awoke’ so I do admit that I was curious where I would end up.

It dragged on for a while, so I had time ponder about the memories I dug out, especially the shade that seemed to be their focus. The image of green-and-purple energy was resonating with me on some deeper level just like the green-and-brown energy, though the feelings were twofold. I felt attraction towards the colors, however, the was also very mild repulsion towards both. It was extremely confusing but since it didn’t cause any real discomfort, I decided to deal with later. That beautiful butterfly looked much more interesting.

…

Huh, so it seems I had already arrived at my destination. Discarding the thoughts about colored energies, I focused on the butterfly. It had a wonderful pair of cyan wings which it used to get the leaves out of its way and dive onto a spiked bug roughly half its size. Well, wasn’t this interesting? I continued to observe through whatever senses I had and bore witness to the butterfly impaling itself on the smaller insect. How anticlimactic.

Feeling a slight shift within my being, I focused my attention on the surroundings and away from the suicide-from-above. I moment I expanded my senses my mind froze for an indefinite amount of time. I simple couldn’t comprehend the beauty of forest that was around me. Trees hundreds if not thousands of times larger than the butterfly stretched above me, blocking the sky. The tiny but numerous rays of sunlight fell on the emerald grass which was slowly dancing in the playful winds.

Life was everywhere, this place simply breathed Life. There was no other way to say it. I felt myself relaxing and my mind slowly drifting away. I tried to resist, afraid to be snuffed out, dead, just like butterfly. Immediately, another feeling mixed in. It too felt me with pleasure, though of the different source. The shift I felt earlier, when the butterfly impaled itself repeated itself. And then again, and again and again and again and I was suddenly aware of what I missed during my earlier observations. 

Life was not the only thing that surrounded me. Rich brown soil and lush vegetation were mixed with hundreds of tiny lives crawling and flying around. And tiny they were indeed, every moment tens of them were extinguished. A centipede ate a spider. A group of ants swarmed and devoured a resting spiked beetle from before. There was Life, yet there was Death. I felt the colors within me resonating with each other, keeping me awake.

They were violently ‘pushing’, trying to banish the other into oblivion. Yet they both were held tight within me, pulled towards each other. The constant resonating caused them to mix together, creating beautiful combinations such as lilac intertwined with dark green. Some colors were bright and vivid, other were on the verge of becoming black. Yet there two constants in this incomplete kaleidoscope: the colors were always combinations of purple, green and brown, and they were constantly in motion.

The chaotic movement of colors actually made me even sleepier. I once again felt myself drift away, but this time it was much more peaceful. I felt myself complete, not just a Shard but at least a tiny bit more whole. I wasn’t just a part of Life, nor was I a part of Death. Frankly speaking, Life and Death themselves were a part of something. Something greater. I felt whatever connection to reality sleep away, but I continued my though nonetheless. The true beauty was in the Cycle, from Life to Death, and back again. The true beauty lied in…

When I awoke again, the first thing I felt was satisfaction. I felt whole, I felt I was myself and not something else, however confusing that might sound. The colors were still resonating but not as violently as before. Now it was like a sibling rivalry, a never-ending game of tag. Green became purple and then brown, while purple shifted to green and then changed back after a few seconds. It was so mesmerizing that I almost missed the second thing. Which would’ve normally been quite difficult, considering it filled almost all of my sense if ‘sight’.

PATH initialized!

Congratulations!

You have awakened and Reality itself sings praise to the new Domain!

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Analyzing Essence…

Analysis Complete!

Title assigned: Domain of Nature!

Interesting. I had no memories of this PATH, but I didn’t have a lot of memories in general, so I decided to simply go with the flow, metaphorically speaking. But that last bit made me smile internally. Yes, Nature. A cycle of Life and Death, always in motion, never set in stone for long. More importantly though, I have finally found out what I am! A Domain, whatever that is. Still, it was useful information so I decided to wait and see what this PATH will show me next.

Domain of Nature

Not just Life and not simply Death, Nature is a Cycle that undergoes change with every turn. Like seasons replace each other every year and corpses decay to enrich the soil for new plants, Life and Death are at your command. As a Domain of Nature, you hold the power over the living and the dead alike.

Well, that was pretty vague but right on the spot. Nothing that I didn’t already know though, so I mentally dismissed the pop ups and took another look around. The forest didn’t change during my unconscious state, the towering trees and waring insects still keeping at it. This time however, I felt my senses expanding, not by a lot, but enough to encompass a sphere of about five-meter radius.

Focusing on the center of the sphere, I tried to find myself, but it appeared that I didn’t quiet have a physical body. Or at least I didn’t see one. I looked around once more, trying to focus on the little critters. Apparently, an ant colony decided to attack a relatively massive beetle that was passing by. Tens if not hundreds tiny red bodies rushed at the hulking figure.

Immediately the front lines were crushed, the beetle waving its horned head and crushing ants against the ground. What really drew my interest however, was that with each ant’s death I felt the same shift as before. It was very subtly, but with concentration I managed to determine what was it exactly that I felt. And finally I succeeded.

With each exoskeleton being smashed to pieces, every little body dying under the weight of the horned beetle, I felt myself growing. It was barely noticeable, a tiny increase of my sphere of influence, or simply Influence as I decided to call it, but it was there. Eventually, after the ant army lost about half of its soldiers, they managed to swarm the beetle and started to crawl into whatever crack they found. After that, it was quickly over.

The second the beetle died, my Influence increase by a whole millimeter! It wasn’t a lot, true, but considering I never noticed any visual increase from the ants, it led to a whole bunch of revelations. The most important being that the bigger the creature, the more my Influence increases. However, what confused me was the fact that I could clearly differentiate between my Influence and the something I felt increasing. This led to another important piece of information. I had some sort of energy connected to me.

You have unlocked Mana! You may know use it.

You have unlocked Essence! You may now use it.

Interesting, but why two? Was one of them Influence? The second I wondered about it, another notification appeared.

Mana

Mana is the energy that permeates the existence as a whole. Otherwise known as Magic Energy, Mana allows users to bend Reality to their will. To a certain extent anyway.

Essence

Essence is a purified Concept. Anything and everything in existence has a Concept behind it. Usually, it is polluted by other energies such as Mana and impossible to obtain, but Domains are capable of extracting it within their Influence, gaining Mana as a side effect. Essence is needed for Domains to Evolve as well as expand their Influence.

So that’s how it is! Since I was a Domain of Nature, the deaths of those insects who died within my Influence let me gain not only Essence, but also Mana. It also seemed that I was capable of Evolving, though if it required Essence it would be quite a while before it happened. I tried to reach deep inside my power, trying to find something beside the swirling colors, which I now assumed were Essence.

Again and again I tried and failed. It was certainly there; I could almost reach it but one thing or the other always broke my concentration. The beauty around was simply too much to ignore. Yet I continued my attempts, right until the golden sun started to set and things got a bit quieter, though I could still feel the numerous insects crawling around.

When the silver sun rose and painted the world in grey-ish tones, I reached my goal. It was like a dam broke, pure Mana flowing into my consciousness, and yet immediately being absorbed back into my Essence. It seemed that I was doing something wrong. That made my victory a bit bitter but I rejoiced nonetheless. I decided to take a break looked around to find anything interesting. What I saw was a spider, carefully weaving its web between the branches of a small bush right on the edge of my Influence.

When an interesting idea popped up in my mind, I decided to execute without hesitation. I was unsure if I could or should draw on my Essence, so I tried pulling on my Mana again. Surprisingly, this time it seemed almost eager to obey me, separating from the Essence. However, it seemed different. When I ‘looked’ closer I noticed that instead of ethereal blue, my Mana was now of a faint dark green color with smears of purple appearing here and there. Simple deduction led to believe that I was not capable of wielding pure Mana at least for now, so for me to use it had to be mixed with my Essence.

Drawing on more of my ‘tainted’ Mana, I tried expelling it from myself and into the spider. At first, it almost seemed reluctant to do so but after a few minutes of concentration it started to leak into the world. Since I didn’t really have a body, unless Influence could be considered one, the Mana flowed right into the spider.

At first, there were no visible changes. Then the spider shuddered, stopping the weaving of its web and almost falling to the ground. Fortunately, it managed to get a hold on one of the branches and balance itself. Which didn’t help when cracks started to form on its exoskeleton making it lose its newfound balance and slip from the branch. Even on the ground, crack continued to grow, showing its flesh underneath the black carapace.

It then began to grow in size, while the damaged chitin was being filled with viscous dark purple substance. It stopped when it was about six centimeters long with thin purple lines tracing all over its body, dim red eyes barely visible in the darkness. As I finished pouring my Mana into it, I noticed a slight connection to it, simply an added sense of feeling its general health. Nothing fancy, but it still could be useful. That was when I also noticed all the messages.

You have unlocked Tainted Mana(Nature)! You may now use it.

Tainted Mana

While Mana in its original form is the pure energy of Reality, it can be Tainted to gain new qualities. Nature: Mana tainted with Nature can more easily interact with things both dead and alive, as well as allowing them to be ‘somewhere in between’.

You have created your first monster!

Monster created: Poisonous Spider(Death)

Title assigned: Monster Maker!

Monster Maker

The world was a terrible place, torn with wars and ravaged by cruelty by its very inhabitants. It all changed when Domains started to appear and fill the world with their creations. By infusing your Essence in the surroundings you can create monsters, which mirror your alignment. This also means that they are hostile to anything but you. Others will unite or be crushed under your mighty army!

Poisonous Spider(Death)

Essence: 0%

This was an average spider before it was infused with the essence of Nature. Due to your lack of control over Mana, the Death affected it more than Life. This spider has poison which was douched by Death making it more potent.

So my guess about Tainted Mana was correct, huh? Well, it seemed my new spider minion really was hostile to everything, as it was already attacking a beetle I haven’t met yet. With a quick leap, my spider jumped right on top of beetle’s carapace and bit it, piercing the weak protection between the head and the body. After a few seconds of seemingly agonizing pain, the beetle collapsed giving me a slight increase in Essence and Influence, while raising my spider’s Essence to 2%.

It seemed using created monsters was a pretty effective way of gathering Essence. And the description of the Title said I could have and army of them. And I needed to improve my controlled over Mana, as I was informed by the last notification. I hesitantly shifted my focus from the spider to a centipede crawling nearby. The leaves quietly rustled as I imagined this centipede working together with my spider, slaughtering other insects and bringing me Essence.

This was going to be a long night…