The sun was merrily trying to boil the shallow water I lay in when I woke up sometime in the early afternoon. The temperature was still quite bearable of course. Living with two volcano elementals for an extended amount of time does that to your heat tolerance.

Admittedly, the steady breeze coming in with the tide might have helped too.

I was alone. Our feast from the morning was completely gone too. I wasn’t sure how Ferra got rid of the inedible remains. After seeing her eat, I wouldn’t have put it past her to just have devoured it all.

The dam towards the open sea was completely under water now. If I hadn’t known that it was there, I’d never have guessed it. The sea was suspiciously calm, the low and even waves making for a peaceful and picturesque sight. Remembering the huge fish we ate for breakfast and considering Tide probably got inspiration for its monstrous form from somewhere, I didn’t trust it one bit.

‘Hic sunt dracones.’

The phrase jumped into my mind as I was gazing over the surf towards the far horizon. Stupid memories and association triggers! Of course, there were monsters! I didn’t have to come here for that. A violent living Swamp with a grudge was presently haunting my home.

Right, I wasn’t here for the pretty views and relaxing beach. I had to improve my magic. So I didn’t even get up and just started to absorb away.

It didn’t feel much different since I hit ‘moderate’ in my water affinity. I did suspect it to be some kind of threshold though. Otherwise, why label it in the first place? The difference between ‘traces’ and ‘weak’ was the ability to properly sense the energy type. ‘Traces’ of ‘Earth’ allowed me to manipulate ice to some small extent after all. I still couldn’t sense earth energy though. So what was the difference between ‘weak’ and ‘moderate’?

I’d try to ask Tide when I saw it next. Neither of the other elementals had been able to help me with that question. Spirits seemed to use magic differently than everyone else. But maybe the ocean elemental was old and experienced enough to shed some light on that. How else would Ferra have figured out how to do magic so quickly? She obviously wasn’t a genius like me.

Speaking of her… Before I could make any progress towards figuring out my new capabilities, my cousin shot out of the water on the other side of the submerged dyke, producing a huge fountain in the process and disturbing the calm surface.

In her jaws was a heavily bleeding… thing? It looked like some kind of mollusc. But I couldn’t even begin to say what kind. If it had a shell or tentacles at some point, it certainly didn’t have them anymore. What seemed strange to me though, was its relatively small size. I’d have expected Ferra to go for larger prey. This bloody bundle of meat could barely be considered a snack for her appetites. Perhaps it was simply a delicacy? Like crayfish?

Ferra plunged into the shallow waters inside the lagoon and I was just about to get my hopes up that she brought me a yummy gift when the water surface on the sea side behind her exploded upwards again. It revealed an enormous shark surging after her. It had… a reef on its head and protruding from its neck?!

I immediately burst into motion to help. Then the shark was shaping the water around itself to support its leap over the dam. It undeniably used magic! I’d been afraid that something like this would happen. Still, this made me falter for a moment. I’d never seen another species use magic before. Elementals didn’t count, okay?

Ferra on the other hand simply dropped her bloody prey and dove out of the way, without even turning around to acknowledge her pursuer.

As the reefshark hit the water again, I noticed the large spikes sticking out from behind each of its fins. I’d have to keep my distance from those. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be fast enough to outmanoeuvre the beast but I needn’t have worried about that. It landed with a splash followed by a dull crash. The water was too shallow for its enormous size and it got stuck in the mud with nearly half its body still poking out of the water.

Ferra finally resurfaced and regarded my shocked face with a smug expression. She did bait that thing here, didn’t she?

The shark might have been beached but that didn’t keep it from thrashing around and lashing out with jets of water. They seemed pitifully weak to me though and I could deflect or dissolve them without any difficulty. Not much pressure behind them at all. Despite that, I wasn’t sure how I could kill it. I shot a couple of water cutters at it but I lost control over the energy as soon as they reached the reefshark’s area of influence. I would not get close to that beast while it was still alive.

I turned to Ferra who huffed amused at my failed attempts. Was she looking down on me? What? You brought it here in the first place! Why couldn’t she just attract a non-magical sea monster?

She watched me making a fool of myself for a little while longer, until she apparently decided it was her turn to show me some magic. She moved a little bit closer to her erstwhile hunter and started to shape the ground beneath it. The water got murkier until only mud and gravel were left around the shark.

She buried it!

The beast slowly began to suffocate and thrashed out ever more desperate as time ticked on. It was a cruel way to kill something but I wasn’t one to talk. I had suffocated my fair share of large prey and let’s better not talk about how I had killed the ‘Thing’ by bursting its innards with water pressure.

Ferra shot me another smug look.

I admit, I might have been kind of jealous. A little bit. I mean, she had earth and water magic both at a usable level. That was simply unfair, right? Half a year ago she couldn’t even use one element.

I considered the - by now - dead shark again. It could use magic too. Did eating magical monsters increase affinity by any chance? Since Ferra was hunting only large water monsters, did she start off with inverse affinities of mine? I had no idea where she could have absorbed so much earth energy in such a short time otherwise. Or she could simply have gained a lot by eating all of those siblings and cousins of ours.

In any case, she was way more intelligent than I’d given her credit for so far.

The reefshark made for an interesting meal. The strange bulging protrusion from its neck, that supported part of the reef-like structure that went from its head along its back, was filled to the brim with water energy. It tasted quite a bit different than the ambient energy surrounding us. Still, it was unmistakable.

Was this some kind of magic organ like my neck frill? Probably, right? And if Ferra ate a lot of this stuff, it suddenly wasn’t so unbelievable anymore how fast she’d progressed, magically speaking.

Speaking off… I really should try to teach her my language symbols.

The following days were busy but monotonous. I steadily continued to absorb water energy and even got Ferra to flood me in muddy earth energy as well, whenever she wasn’t out hunting for more food, eating or sleeping. And she did that a lot. I had absolutely no idea where she put it all. At least once every other day she went out with the flood to bait more large magic capable sea monsters into her lagoon. So she was eating and digesting a minimum of her body weight in sea-food every single day. It was simply astonishing.

I taught her more of my symbols whenever she was resting and eating. At first only names for things but, while she might not have been capable of picking it up as easily as Tide, my cousin proved to still learn it as fast as some of my smartest children. The proper version too. Not just the bare bones thing I used with elementals.

Ripple and Tide visited now and then, but they never stayed for too long, preferring to play around in the deeper waters away from the shore. I did learn more about Tide and Ferra’s relationship during those social calls though.

Apparently, my cousin was living near this coast for quite some time before I met her again during the last mating season. She was hunting large prey in the estuaries of the rivers but stayed away from the open sea after her first run-ins with magic-using monsters. She’d also seen Tide from afar, but never went close to it out of fear of its similarly monstrous forms.

Then she witnessed me using magic and even could feel it when I pumped her full of energy to help her heal. So, after returning here she tried it out for herself. Tide noticed her attempts and approached her, helping her in figuring out how it worked.

Which was quite a bit different for elementals than it was for us, I must say. After consulting Tide - over a few consecutive visits - I thought I had a pretty solid grasp on that at least.

Elementals, or proto-spirits how Memory called them, took in a different kind of energy - I couldn’t perceive - that was permeating everything around us. I’d call that ‘raw energy’ for now. I was pretty sure that this was the ‘Energy’ Memory was speaking of when she said it became sentient and formed ‘pseudo souls’.

Now, an elemental took this raw energy and attuned it with their own aspects, transforming, emitting and using ‘elemental energy’ to produce magical effects.

This elemental energy was what I was using and absorbing. And if my assumptions were right, it also was what was giving creatures like us affinities in the first place. I had no idea how my children could have gotten Vigils affinities otherwise.

This also meant that, since elementals existed now, the inhabitants of this new world would develop more and stronger magical affinities as time went on. On the other hand, the more magic users there were who could and would absorb elemental energy, the less of it would permeate the environment… probably.

This thought process brought me back to the strangely different tasting water energy inside the magical monsters Ferra dragged in all the time.

During my meditation sessions, I had made progress with my own inner magic network. Specifically, with some of the organs I had associated with using magic early on.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

My tongue kept being a pure sensory organ. But my heart and lungs were steadily pumping the magic circulating through my system. I was pretty sure by now, though, that it was mainly my heart that did this. The lungs merely appeared to be involved because I could take in more water from the air through breathing than through my skin. When I was submerged on the other hand and used energy absorption, my skin showed far more magical activity than my lungs ever did.

Moving on to the interesting part. My neck shield was filled to the brim with water energy. At least it felt that way. And when I tried to exert a bit of pressure there, it flooded through my magic network. It was a bit as if I had a second heart I could somewhat control the beat of.

It felt tremendously energizing to do this. And I even had some small amount of control over the energy I displaced from my neck frill in this way.

Suffice to say, I was absolutely excited by this development and practised this ‘cycling’ and ‘pumping’ whenever I could spare the focus. And a few days later I was rewarded with a newly recognized proficiency on my Profile.

Species: Scalamander

  Breed: Swamp

  Sex: female

  Age: 3 years

Designation: Sweetie

  Aliases: Mom, Precious

  Titles: Matriarch (pending, specification required)

Occupation: Teacher, Nurse

Blessings: Champion of Memory

Traits: none

Affinities: Water (moderate)

    Earth (traces)

Proficiencies: Teaching (competent)

      Swimming (novice)

      Hiking (novice)

      Ambient Energy Manipulation (novice)

      Energy Absorption (novice)

      Cooking (basic)

      Mana Manipulation (basic)

Quests: Let’s make a cult!

Notes:    Dear Memory,

    don’t forget my pie!

    Who is Fertility and why do we have to piss her off?

It seemed like this personally stored energy was called ‘mana’? Previous me did remember what mana was supposed to be from countless usages in pop-culture of course. I just didn’t expect it to be a term that would come up here after everything else had been labelled ‘energy’.

Hey! And my alias of ‘caring little sister’ had disappeared. Well, I had taught Ferra my name symbol. I didn’t think it would matter though, since it didn’t really carry the other meanings ‘Sweetie’ would. Completely on purpose, obviously.

Well, that wasn’t important at the moment anyway. I had a new kind of energy to play with after all.

Em… train. I had to train... Not play. Who’d be so irresponsible to just play around? Not me. Because I was a certified genius and completely serious in my scientific endeavours.

When I tried to teach Ferra about my new discovery, she was unable to replicate it. It probably required a moderate affinity, I concluded. Was it mean of me to feel happy about being superior in this aspect?

Perhaps.

But there was no reason to pelt me with pebbles when I huffed a little at her fruitless efforts! None! She just made such a funny face, I swear! She didn’t have to take it personally, right?

Anyways, after a few days of training my new skill, I managed to expel some of my mana from my body. The control I had over it once it was outside was incredible. Not comparable with the difficulties I had in the beginning with the ambient energy. It felt far more instinctual.

My Profile also recognised another new proficiency called ‘Energy Expulsion’ at basic level.

Mana proved to be a very limited resource though. If I used too much of it, I didn’t have enough left in my frill to build up the pressure needed to continue the exercise. Fortunately, it filled back up over time. Very slowly without any input from me, or quite a bit faster if I used energy absorption.

Sadly, it had a maximum capacity too. Once it was full, any excess seemed to disappear. I assumed that some of it was expanding my affinity tiny bit by tiny bit. I still wasn’t sure if ‘Affinity’ was simply a fancier term for the capacity of this ‘storage tank’ or if there was more to it. The two were undoubtedly connected though.

But still, that couldn’t amount for most of the elemental ambient energy that seemingly got lost in the process.

When I asked Tide about it, the elemental rumbled at me. ‘[essence] [turn back] [into] [raw energy]’, was its only helpful comment on that topic.

So… by using mana or absorbing too much ambient energy, I turned it back into the raw stuff. How did I do that? No idea. But it would explain why the elementals I met liked to stay around me in the first place. I basically was something akin to a food source, right? So even if I was a bit squishy and couldn’t take part in most of their ‘fun’ activities, if I was constantly giving off raw energy because I hadn’t been able to empty my mana tank until now… Yeah. That did make kind of sense, I supposed.

However, expelling water mana to do magic seemed way too wasteful to me for the time being. There was more than enough ambient water energy to go around. So I started to experiment with my inner energy network again. Mapping it out as much as I could manage.

I was quite surprised by what I found when I reached the base of my tail. There, hidden away, sat another much smaller gland of energy that wasn’t water. Suffice to say, I was very intrigued. There was only one other affinity I supposedly had. So I tried to flood this gland with my water mana and expelled some of its contents into the gravel at the beach.

The results were amazing. I had as much control over the infused pebbles as I usually had over liquids. It turned out to be an extremely short-lived experience. But I finally had discovered my earth mana.

The rest was simply dull repetition.

I continued to constantly bug Ferra to engulf me in earth energy. I knew now that I was indeed absorbing it because my corresponding mana gland was filling faster whenever she did.

It took a while - maybe a couple dozen days - but eventually, I could actually feel the earth energy around me. It started with being able to taste it when I took some rocks into my mouth, as it had all that time ago with the water after my metamorphosis.

Afterwards, I continued to improve rather quickly. I didn’t need Ferra’s help anymore. But further increases in my water affinity sadly were minuscule at best.

I also was away from home for nearly two whole moons now. I only hoped that everyone was still fine. If they stayed put and didn’t play too much with fire, they should have been. Probably. Hopefully. I couldn’t be sure though.

So I decided to call my training retreat a success at this point and prepared to travel back home.

Ferra didn’t like that. She got pretty used to my company while I was here. Maybe she hoped I’d stay forever. But I explained the situation with the swamp elemental to her and she had to be aware that I couldn’t stay away. Perhaps my cousin simply couldn’t relate to the concern I had for my children. It wouldn’t have surprised me, because I actually wasn’t all that concerned.

Which annoyed me endlessly.

But even with my lacking mother instincts, I knew on an intellectual level that I ought to be. It was a never-ending struggle against myself.

Since my departure was close, Ferra took me on one of her hunting trips to procure one last large feast. I honestly was afraid of what we’d encounter. Tide and Ripple weren’t anywhere in the area. So we were completely on our own.

My cousin might have been used to this. But I certainly had no experience with facing down monsters capable of using magic. Well, I certainly wouldn’t chicken out in front of her. It wouldn’t do at all if she thought me a coward.

Our prey this time was something akin to a sea scorpion. Instead of a stinger, it had an elongated cone shell. And to say it was huge was an understatement.

This time Ferra didn’t use a bloody bait. She didn’t need to. The scorpion was aggressively pursuing us the moment we came close.

We darted away but it kept up easily. Without magic assisted swimming I doubted I’d been able to escape. Leading it back towards the lagoon was only a matter of staying close and pretending to let it catch up now and then. The final takedown was a repeat of the reefshark. This time with the assistance of my new shiny earth magic.

Watching Ferra devour another meal two times her size, I finally asked her how she was able to do that.

She pondered the question for a while. Then she wrote ‘[profile] [don’t know word]’ between bites.

Something on the Profile? ‘[A Proficiency?]’, I asked.

She shook her head.

‘[Up or down?]’, I wanted to know next.

‘[up]’, she replied, ‘[thrice]’.

I was only mildly shocked. Still enough to choke on my next mouthful of meat. ‘[Blessing?]’, I asked.

She shrugged, blood running down her maw.

But I was sure now. It made way too much sense. ‘[You’re a Champion Soul?]’

She thought about it for a while, then nodded and took another bite.

I gulped. ‘[Can you tell me who your Patron is?] I didn’t know if Iris’ case of not being allowed to share that information was common.

‘[Hunger]’, she wrote without stopping to eat.

Hunger? I only heard about that one once. Memory had been watching their ‘live stream’ when we were in her domain. Right before she deposited me… Wait. She put me in the same spawning pond as Hunger’s champion on purpose, didn’t she?

‘[Do you have a quest too?]’, I wanted to know.

‘[Yes] [eat, grow,]’, She paused for a moment. ‘[after you saved me] [make babies near the sea]’

I stared at her.

She continued her meal completely unperturbed.

That sounded suspiciously familiar. Raising offspring near an elemental.

Memory and Hunger, and whoever Iris’ godly patron was… I couldn’t help but feel like something fishy was going on here.