I turn and flick my will, launching myself into the sky. Time to go run damage control and see how everything else is running.

Vel sends feelings of content and worry, confused on what is going on. She is also beaming from our recent victory over the umber hulk.

‘We will have to train to better understand each other, later,’ I send over. I get a feeling of affermination back.

Floating up into the sky, I close my eyes and feel the katra that makes up Amia and everything on it.

I can feel lines of gray katra running through the crust of the world. They intersect at various points, weaving together to create a well of katra.

As I look at them, a shocking realization hits me. These are channels.

The system called them ‘ley lines’, but they look very similar to channels found in sacred artists. In fact, I would call them channels, and the wells where a core would settle.

Not for the first time, a thought comes unbidden to my mind. Is my katra alive?

Its unsettling, so much so that I have been ignoring it. But from the fact that it seems to have the ability to create life, and to build complex systems like the cycle in which katra is made and used.

The chimera come to mind. I never willfully created them with anything in mind. I still don’t know how they came to be, or the link I shared with them. If I had to describe it, it is like they were a test run on the life creation aspect of my katra.

The controller consumed various creatures to help grow in strength and create creatures to hunt more food. Then it used that to create better chimera, almost like it…

Like it was storing and cataloging away beneficial traits.

A quest feelings stirs in my stomach as my thoughts spiral. If the Controller was cataloging beneficial traits, and from my fight with it and the giant chimera, it was creating new ones. And what ability do I have? Versatile adaption.

My thoughts go even further, leaping onto something else. I stumble and fall down, my mind spiraling even further.

What if it wasn’t just consuming for energy, but also studying and cataloging information away for later use? What is I am using that catalog without even knowing it?

My right hands comes up, my fingers pushing at the base of my skull in the back of my neck, massaging the flesh. I’d also suspected something about it, but frankly my mind has been on other things.

The controller and chimera ate people.

The queasiness intensifies.

It consumed Vicar right after he shattered his core.

I feel bile rising in my throat.

And I consumed it in return.

I start dry heaving, astral saliva flicking my lips as my spectral stomach churns, trying to expel something that isn’t there.

When I start to change or create something, I always feeling the crackling along my spine. I can faintly, hazily, remember whispers when I work, like a hand guiding and helping me achieve what I wanted.

That little plant on the surface of my core so long ago comes to my mind. I never had figured out how it go there.

Just recently, when I was trying to stretch the border of my soul to bring the umber hulk’s core into this place, there had been someone.

The “mother” person Vengeance talked about, who helped give him form.

My mind is sent reeling. They’ve been here the whole time.

And the seemingly random things that my katra has done, like forming the crystalline structures that both heal me and give me strength, all don’t seem so random.

No, it was even before that. Those seemingly parasitic like chunks of katra that had latched onto my heart, blocking the flow of both blood and katra seem far more deliberate. What if they hadn’t formed naturally, but were there for a reason? Like say, to leech from my body so they could grow stronger.

I can feel thousands of questions crashing into the millions I have had, my mind trying to comprehend how this could be. The system had said there was ‘Demonic astral’ in me. It had even sent 303 to kill me.

But how could that astral have gotten into me? Could have it been when I looked into ‘the all seeing eye’. But no, that was after the chimera.

So how could it have gotten inside my artifact?

This ‘mother’ had to be connected, and she has to have been responsible for at least part of the way my katra has shaped itself. And, most likely, what abilities I had attained from the system when reaching the Steel realm.

Finding this person that is supposedly residing in my soul space has been just bumped up on my massive list of things to do. Right under stabilizing everything in my world and getting out of the ‘dungeon’ in the real world.

I take a deep breath steadying myself. Have I, this whole time, been manipulated? Has my growing strength been a screen for something more sinister?

The bandages on my arm have grown, and I feel that the answer lies somewhere there. This demonic astral must also have some reason behind it.

But what is the point? What am I not getting?

Why put ‘demonic astral’ inside me, and when? I can’t worry about this right now.

I turn my gaze back onto the surface of Amia. My eyes trace the many ley lines that cover the surface of my world, intersecting at points and forming katra wells.

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I close my eyes, feeling the katra that makes up this place. I scan over the entire surface of my world, looking at its shattered surface. I can feel everything down there, and the hotspots of Gray katra that still linger.

I hadn’t been able to drain all the katra, the result being the atmosphere being charged near its max. The katra cycle was stabilizing, but it was also concentrating it in locations, mostly the katra wells and leylines.

But a few were not being absorbed by the leylines, and as a result, have started to seep into the local flora and fauna. My gaze hovers over one of these spots.

I watch a a gecko convulses on the jungle floor, spikes erupting from its back. In moments, it is covered in a layer of hard, scaly protrusion like armor. It also has grown to be several feet large, about the size of a dog.

It stops convulsing, straightens, licks an eyeball, then scurries up a tree. It sits on a branch, basking in the raw Gray katra and slowly absorbing it.

It kinda reminds me of a sacred beast. Only, without the core.

Looking into the gecko’s structure, I can pinpoint the biggest concentration of katra, right in its gut. Instead of a core forming over its heart, I can feel what seems like a small pool of katra. It’s not contained, so little bits of it are seeping into the creatures body, but it only seems to be strengthening it. There is also a very weak katra cycle inside it, slowly filling the pool.

It doesn’t require a core to use katra?

I watch as the mutated gecko starts pulling katra from the tree its basking on, its pure Gray katra becoming tainted with wooden katra. In meres moments, all the normal katra is gone, and in its place is Gray Wood katra.

Did it… just change aspect?

My gaze shifts away from it, and I focus in on other creatures that have been exposed to vast amounts of Gray katra. I can see some very strange variations, and a few that seem to have mutated into the same thing. I watch them all, and once they have fully undergone the change in their anatomy, they start pooling katra from the environment.

They all are gaining imprinted Gray katra.

I watch them, unsure if I should stop this. I don’t know if I can call these imprints anymore, they’re more like aspects of my Gray aspect.

I focus in on the plants, which are taking in far more of the katra in the hotspot than the animals.

One of the tree’s rapidly sheds its leaves, their green being drained away and the husks spirals off of the limbs of the tree. In the leaves’ place, red boils start to form all over the branches. They quickly swell with viscous red liquid, hanging down like giant drops of red water from the branches.

I can’t help but chuckle at the sight of the strange plant, it’s bark taking on a red hue. The things on its limbs kind of look like giant cranberries.

I watch in puzzlement as the other trees around the ‘cranberry’ tree start to absorb little bits of its unique mixture of Gray katra. They start mutating in a similar manner, giant cranberries appearing along their limbs.

How curious.

Soon after almost all the trees have mutated, along with the fauna and other flora, the hotspot is fades. Most of the raw Gray katra is used up, only a few strands left floating in the air.

Doesn’t look like anything adverse has exactly happened… I wrinkle my nose a little at the strange, ugly trees. They don’t seem to be a cause for concern, only just a new strain of tree that might... not be pretty.

Moving my gaze away from the grove of cranberry trees, I keep scanning over the surface of my world. My mind eventually settles on a snowy mountain.

A group of tents hugs the slope of the mountain, paths carved into its surface. People dressed in thick hides move about, talking and looking extremely confused.

They are also falling down, their balance being thrown off by the massive wings now on their backs. From their heads curl horns, in all varieties.

They seem to be chattering excitedly, and some in fear. Others are just sitting on the ground, a few tugging at their new horns.

I feel one of them, using my sense of katra to examine their spirit. I can’t find a pool like with the Graylings, but instead I find a far faster moving cycle. It seems far stronger and robust than any I have ever seen, and I get the sense that it can be shaped into certain patterns to get varied effects.

These must be the Kal.

I ponder of the idea of trying to explain to them what has happened, but decide that it would only cause more problems than help. Most of them seem to be adjusting well already, but I think if I appeared, it might just make everything more complex. I also need to find this ‘mother’.

I move on from the village of newly created Kal, moving my mind over the mountains and into the desert on the other side of them.

Flowing over the dunes, I scan the entirety of the sandy desert, then move on, looking for something. I just don’t know what I am looking for.

I can feel a headache starting to form between my eyes, but I continue to spread my consciousness across the surface, scanning for something, anything.

I pass over many quickly fading hotspots, leylines and katra wells. I stop as I scan over a large grassland. There, near a river and herd of strange, scally bison, is a what looks like a shoddy town.

On the bank of the river are buildings made of mud and thatch, grouped together tightly, with a couple feet wide wall.

Brev.

These people seem further along than anyone else I have seen, less nomadic and more situated. Small people have congregated in the center of the village.

They vary in height, but the highest I can see in about 4 feet tall. They clothes are ill fighting for their stout bodies, woolly shirts far bigger than their torsos, and pants that they trip over.

The Brev are small, but their muscles are tightly packed, their chests and shoulders are all wide and broad. They may be short, but I can tell that they can lift far more than any normal human.

Their skin is also odd, it has a reddish tint to it, not like from a bad sunburn, but an actual reddish hue.

How interesting.

I feel one of them, and I can’t find a pool of katra inside them like everything else I have seen. Instead, I find what looks similar to a core at the base of their skulls. It is a compact, compressed pool of katra that is very slowly being filled with katra. I get the impression from this concentrated pool that it is incomplete.

The best way I can describe it is that there are open sockets that can be connected with something. What that something might be, I am unsure.

The system said they were intune with their surroundings. Could this have something to do with it?

I note it down in my mind, concerned about what might fit in those empty sockets in the pools. Now that I am reasonably sure that someone has been manipulating the creatures on Amia and me, I want to make sure I know of any possible problems that might occur.

The Brev are all arguing heatedly in the center of their village, trying to understand the new psychical changes they have undergone.

I move on from the village of Brev, and continue to scan the surface of Amia. I soon finish, not finding any seemingly harmful problems, or any sign of a foreign entity.

Where could ‘mother’ be hiding, if not on Amia?

I open my spectral eyes, turning to look at the vast empty space around Amia, its sun and the moons.

My gaze goes to the sun, and where the Origin has settled itself inside. Closing my eyes, I feel the Fire imprinted Gray katra and all the other inumerable gas types that make up the sun.

I stop on a cool spot in the center, where the Origin has nestled itself. And I can feel inside it a small enclosure.

Suddenly, I hear a voice inside my head, one that should not be there. I immediately raise the barriers around my mind from my Immutable Will trait.

It doesn’t do anything.

“It seems you have found me. Shall we talk?”