The older foxes decided to end the sparring early. Kairos felt embarrassed, because she knew they were doing it because of her.

As Kairos sat there, she kept getting glanced at by the older foxes. She really didn’t like being the center of attention, but she just sat there taking it.

After a few minutes, she decided to refocus on her essence–though she was careful to not make a scene as she had before.

As she refocused on her essence string, Kairos saw that this time some of them were already slightly circulating around her body, so it took only the smallest of nudges to get the rest to circulate. It still took all of her attention to make sure they kept circulating through.

Kairos could only stare at them, utterly mesmerized. Her previous precautions melted away as she focused her entire being on the essence. It was beautiful–as Kairos focused entirely on it, it brightened, as if the more she acknowledged it was there, the stronger it got.

Kairos could feel the power coursing through her–the need to move and the inability to rest, the energy that made all things. She felt the energy flourish from the grass underneath her paws as it went from her to the grass, then come back to her with more strength.

When Kairos watched the transfer closely, though, she noticed that it wasn’t a one way gain, but rather a trade. Her essence would move into the ground supplying it with her water affinity for a moment, causing the grass to react and grow ever so slightly. In return, the grasses’ essence would give her essence a little bit of its energy.

As she watched the process, she realized this is how the grass could survive in even the harshest of times: the animals and critters supplied it with the required energies and affinities, and in return the grass and plants would supply the animals and critters with the energy to move.

It hit Kairos then how much the ecosystem worked together. Not just with essence, but the fact that grass supplied mice, voles, deer, and other animals with food. And those very mice and deer supplied higher ups in the food chain.

The whole world helped each other. And that was the key. Essence and mana isn’t a tool made for us to abuse, it's something made to help us. We help it by giving it a body and soul for it to use so it can thrive, and it supplies us with energy, food, and power. If we want to use essence, we need to make sure we are giving something and not just taking.

To test her crude theory, Kairos weaved a little bit of her essence into her mana. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but for the essence to practically eat the mana wasn’t it.

After the essence ate her mana, it glowed vibrantly and thrumbed out of her paw in the form of a small bolt of lightning. What just happened? was all Kairos could think.

After a few moments of processing, Kairos wasted no time. As she ran several theories through her head, she settled on the most likely.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

The essence was empowered off of my mana, and not being directed, it shot out from the easiest exit. Basically the essence used the mana to supply itself, but not being directed into a spell or through her system, it flew to the easiest exit. Which, in this case, was her paw.

But wait, if it was a lightning bolt, did it have a rune? Kairos thought, excitedly doing it again. And sure enough, when she focused, she could see the faintest outline of a rune like formation.

But seeing as she wasn’t sure if it was a functional rune or not, she decided to draw it out in the dirt. So, using her claws to dig the fine lines into the dirt, she got to work.

What Kairos finished with was a square rhombus with a long plus through it, all four sides protruding from the rhombus with the lines going through the top and bottom being twice as long as the ones on the sides. It has a dot in the center and lines outlining the top and bottom of the rhombus in an arrow-like fashion. The top rhombus outline has another slightly longer arrow shape that connects near the top of the line. The bottom has two lines on either side that outline the line and arrow.

As Kairos stared at the thing she had created, she was speechless at how beautiful it was. Her essence seemed to react to it when Kairos brushed her paw over the top of it. She then felt the odd need to touch the rune, to give to the rune. Almost the instant her paw touched it, mana jumped from her body to the rune.

Kairos watched in shock as her essence followed the indents in the ground, causing a light blue shimmer. Once the essence had wiggled its way into every curve and line, it started to glow vibrantly, before cackling with electricity. Kairos decided to take the test a little farther after seeing the violent reaction.

As she walked over to the edge of the yard, she found a long stick and dragged it back over to the rune. Picking it up in her paws, she poked the rune with it. As the stick came close to the rune, lightning quickly jumped from the ground to the stick, causing a small arc of electricity. The arch was far stronger than that of a static electricity spark.

Kairos could only stare at it in awe. She had used barely any mana, and yet the rune had responded so vigorously. Following along the thought trail of efficiency, Kairos wondered if all runes were this effective, or if it was just the runes related to her affinity.

I guess I need to study more magic and affinity based books if I want to know more.

Of course, Kairos dreaded the thought of studying–but if was to learn more about mana and essence, she guessed it would be alright.

Putting the thoughts of studying aside, Kairos refocused on the task at hand, recirculating her essence. As Kairos was stuck in her questions, she realized that her essence had stopped circulating, likely due to lack of guidance.

Refocusing on her essence, Kairos worked on guiding it back into circulation, working to the point where her essence stayed in circulation without guidance. Unknown to her, however, she had been meditating there for several hours.

She had made progress, getting the essence to stay for approximately a minute without her full attention.

Once she was satisfied with how essence flowed, she pulled herself out of her mind's eye and took a look at her surroundings.

It was dark. When Kairos had gone into meditation, it was around midday, and now it was a little before Spirit's wake. She had to hurry home and pray the orphanage wasn't too mad at her.

Leaving the training grounds, Kairos thought back to the lightning rune. She was curious to see how the classes would react to it.

Curiosity aside, I need to get back Kairos thought, dreading the walk even more.