I had expected that Sarka successfully demonstrating the validity of at least some of my claims would make the adults take me more seriously. And I was right. The problem that presented itself, however, was that it had worked a bit too well.

All of a sudden, Mom wanted my opinion on where we should travel next. Naturally, I had absolutely no freaking clue. Why would she even think otherwise? She seemed strangely pleased when I exasperatedly asked her exactly that. Nonetheless, from then on, she made it a point to explain her navigation decisions to me whenever it was feasible to do so.

Then Hiska started to shove all of the crude weapons and tools they had made in front of me, expecting an evaluation. Well, I didn’t know how half of them were supposed to be used in the first place besides that those with edges were probably for cutting. There wasn’t a huge variety since we were limited to what we could conveniently take with us. Which wasn’t all too much since every adult had a child to carry. In the end, I had to ask and learn why we needed so many different shaped blades and spikes in the first place. I hadn’t seen most of them in use so far.

It turned out that different shapes were designed to overcome the defences of different common prey animals. Making a new fitting tool during a fight supposedly was not always possible, since one could never be sure to still have enough mana to do so.

My reply to that statement, that you would have enough mana if you were good enough at Energy Absorption, earned me a thorough scolding from Mom. Well, I admit, I might have been a bit smug when I said that. So it was understandable, really.

Still, for the future, I was more concerned with the prospect of fending off and bringing down predators than bringing down prey. As long as we had to move around all the freaking time, tools should be of the ‘multipurpose’ and ‘easy to carry’ variety whenever possible. I kept that thought to myself for now, though. I really didn’t need another scolding and my focus should be on learning and teaching proper magic anyway.

Leastways, Mom and Hiska renewed their efforts to learn Energy Absorption too. Well, for Hiska it probably was the first genuine try. Sarka ensuring them of her accelerated mana recovery rate must have been the final push to convince her that it was worth it. Mayhaps my slightly self-satisfied attitude also played a minor role in it. Possibly.

I thought Mom was mainly annoyed with herself that Sarka had been the first who managed to grasp it. I wasn’t sure, though. She didn’t ever outright say something to that effect. She just seemed… strangely driven.

Triga and Kress noticed as well how different the adults treated me now, of course. Soon enough, I found myself to be the most frequent evening target of Triga’s ‘why?’-game and Kress was even more reluctant to interact with me than before. I had the feeling that beneath all her shyness she was a bit jealous that her mother was paying so much attention to me. And boy, was she right about that! Sarka was hanging on my every word, now, whenever I opened my mouth to say… anything, really. It was honestly kinda scary.

It was three days after Sarka had announced her success and we were camping in yet another cavern that someone else had dug a long time ago. This particular one had needed a bit of maintenance when we arrived. It didn’t look damaged through a fight, merely not repaired in quite a while. There had been a few cracks in the ceiling and the entrance was partially collapsed. Both probably caused by water erosion. Considering the frequency of rain here, ‘quite a while’ might have been an understatement. Cleaning out all the cobwebs wasn’t exactly ‘fun’ either.

Kress was hiding behind her mother, snacking on grilled legs from the very large spider who had used this cave as its nest when we arrived earlier in the afternoon. I was sure she still listened intently to every word.

“I’m only saying that it was possible during my last life. Previous me even learned it long before I had a high enough affinity for any element to use my own mana.” I eagerly bit down on another helping of my mother’s sweet pre-digested speciality.

“Then why doesn’t it seem to work at all for me?” Sarka wanted to know. “Am I doing something wrong? I’m doing it wrong, right? I knew it! I’m just not good enough.”

I hastily gulped down another mouth full. “Not at all! Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure direct manipulation is far more difficult now. I already told you that the amount of Energy in the environment is way less than back then.”

Sadly, this was fairly typical behaviour for Sarka. Despite being the only one who managed to learn absorption so far, she had no confidence in herself at all.

“And My previous species could literally taste magic, which we can’t. So it is only to be expected,” I added. “Don’t worry too much. It’s only been three days. I needed moons to get it right last time!”

Kress peeked out behind her mothers back, eyeing me imploringly. When I turned to look at her, however, she ducked back down immediately. It was a bit frustrating but nobody commented on it, everybody already being used to this kind of thing from her.

“I know.” Sarka let out a sighing hiss that probably would have sounded a tad threatening to everyone who didn’t speak our language. “I’m too impatient, right? I just want too much at once. I shouldn’t ever have tried to hatch two eggs for my first clutch.” She deflated completely, sprawling herself over the ground.

Wow. That came kinda out of nowhere.

I mean, I understood that she was still depressed, but what could I even reply to that change in topic? I turned to Mom, seeking help. She had been suspiciously quiet the whole time.

When I met her eyes she only slightly shook her head. So… don’t reply at all? Another topic change? Whatever should I dooooo? I really wasn’t good at dealing with depressed people!

Thankfully, Hiska came to my rescue. “Why do you not eat a bit of the spider too, Griss? Do you like baby food that much?”

‘Baby food’. That’s what they call the pre-digested meat mush. Despite being a very clumsy and obvious attempt to talk about something else, it was a valid question. I hadn’t eaten anything else but my mother’s ‘baby food’ ever since I first had it. Not because it was so disturbingly delicious. I mean, it totally was! But everything gets kinda bland when you have nothing else in between. No, the real reason was something different.

“There is much more mana in it than in the spider,” I explained. “Or anything else I’ve eaten since I was born, really.”

Everyone perked up at that. Even Kress popped her head up again.

“Whenever I eat it, I feel my mana increase. Not by much. But that it is noticeable at all should speak for itself, no?”

“Why do you think that is?” Mom asked. I wasn’t sure if she was genuinely interested or simply wanted to keep the conversation away from Kress’ lost sister. At least she had never inquired before why I always asked her for more meat mush instead of partaking in the ‘catch of the day’.

“Well, I have two theories at the moment,” I said. “It could just be that our species developed in that way so that babies could learn magic faster.” I paused here, getting a couple of affirmative trills and a quiet “why?” from Triga. “It could also be that everything in our bodies naturally becomes enriched with mana. Mom, you told me that predators seem to prefer hunting us over nearly every other prey, right?”

That seemed to rattle her a bit. Her eyes flew wide open. “You mean to say…” She shot glances at Sarka and Hiska. I mirrored her. Both of them seemed as shocked as her.

“I don’t know. It’s just a theory so far.” I turned to look towards the cave entrance, staring into the dark night. “It would make sense, though. I have many memories of eating mana-rich organs from other magic-using species in my last life. It wasn’t just tasty. It helped with increasing magic affinities, too. Not significantly, but still notable.”

I didn’t need to mention that I still hadn’t found even one magic organ in my body. The general mana saturation in my body simply seemed too high to make out where it gathered without a doubt. I was pretty certain that one ‘gland’ was somewhere in my abdomen. That would belong to the affinity I was the furthest along with so far. I suspected it would be Earth, but I couldn’t be sure until I had accumulated enough of it to use it. But it probably wouldn’t take too much longer before I could narrow at least that one down. However, this also could all be attributed to the lack of a sensing organ. So, I didn’t want to bring the higher medium saturation up before I was certain it was actually the case.

The mood was successfully killed in any case. Good job, Griss! You manage to make any topic depressing. I looked around. Everyone seemed pensive. Well, everyone but Triga who just continued her meal, curiously glancing at the adults from time to time.

“Even if I’m right, it changes nothing,” I said finally to break the silence. “It doesn’t matter why they hunt us specifically. We can’t change the reason anyway. Even if we could reduce the mana in our bodies somehow, they would still expect us to be the same as every other Lost One. So it wouldn’t help. We’d just be weaker.”

Nobody had any response to that. I didn’t manage to lighten the mood, though. I really should work on my motivational skills, shouldn’t I? Was there a proficiency for that? Well, there was one for teaching, so… maybe?

“Do you still think we could become strong enough to fight back?” Mom hissed after a while to break the awkward silence.

“Of course!” I hurriedly replied. “We just have to work on fine control. What I’ve seen of magic so far was very wasteful.”

I saw Hiska was about to protest, so I quickly continued.

“I know that it is a very instinctual process for you. Mana has many shortcuts in the spell shaping process.” I pointed at Sarka with my tail. “Which is also part of why it is difficult for her to do anything with Ambient Energy yet. Mana seems to have far less need for a clear Intent or Control. You said it yourself, Hiska. You just need to Focus on what you want to have done and as long as you still have ‘Fuel’, it happens ‘somehow’. That’s not at all how I learned to use magic in my previous life.”

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“Yeah, yeah… no need to repeat it all again. I remember well enough.” Hiska grumbled.

Mom chuckled and Sarka smiled mirthfully.

“”Intent, Focus, Control, Reach, Strain, Fuel,”” the four of us said at once. I’d repeated that particular mantra over and over even before Sarka’s success. Everyone was smiling again.

“Practise, practise, practise,” Triga recited another one. Then she started preening, apparently quite proud of herself.

Well, at least she didn’t ask ‘why’.

From then on, all the kids got to eat was ‘baby food’. Even when we had fresh meat available.

Triga was a bit cross with me when I got the blame for that. It was a blessing to not suffer from her endless questions for a while and the ‘angry looks’ she shot me were actually kind of cute.

Kress didn’t complain at all. She also didn’t shy away anymore. On the contrary. She started to position herself right between her mother and me whenever we were making camp somewhere. Then she exaggeratedly snuggled into Sarka as if to mark her territory.

Good for her?

Both girls were developing very fast. Mentally and physically. I wondered when we were considered big enough to walk on our own outside. Or better asked, when would we become too heavy to be carried around all day?

The farther we travelled, the more varieties of ‘prey’ we encountered. There was another water gobbler once. This one was even bigger than the first, but the adults had proper stone spears this time and the fight wasn’t quite as dangerous.

Then there were two different types of frill-necked lizards. One was quite large and solitary. Built a bit like an armoured rhino with a tail longer than the rest of its body, grey scales all over. Only the frill was quite colourful in blues, violets and reds. The other frill-necked lizards were much smaller and lived in packs. Mom said we’d only hunt those yellow little buggers when we couldn’t find anything else. Not enough meat for too much effort and they supposedly weren’t even very tasty.

Much the same went for anything that was small and fast, really. There was one species that looked suspiciously like scaled molerats. They apparently were very annoying to catch because they were able to all but swim through the ground and Hiska described their bites as ‘very nasty’.

All kinds of insects and arachnids were on the menu too. My favourite so far was a giant scorpion with fire magic. I’d been able to locate the magic organ for its heat affinity after butchering it and the six of us shared it equally. It gave me only marginally more of a boost than Mom’s regular meat mush. Still, us kids had an excuse to eat something else for a change. I sadly had discovered that grilling or frying the meat before eating reduced the mana content. Which I honestly hadn’t expected from a chunk of meat enriched with Heat-Mana.

Of course, we also had to hide quite a lot. There thankfully weren’t any other fliers than insects. And those large enough to be the least bit dangerous were making enough noise for us to avoid them.

I also learned that most predators lived in or near water most of the time. There was this enormous croco turtle thing I’d seen once from afar. And there were whole schools of little carnivorous fish that would tear the meat from your living body chunk by chunk as long as you let them. I pictured them as piranhas, but I actually hadn’t seen one yet. I was only told to look out for approaching swarms whenever we had to cross a river.

Regardless, over the course of the first two moons of our journey, we were only in acute danger of dying a total of two times.

The first time was when we encountered another sailback. This one was alone and we ran into it very much by accident. It was near the end of the day and a short while earlier, we had found our potential resting place for the night completely collapsed. On the search for an alternative, we had entered one of the gorges that were so common around here.

Everyone was highly alerted. We had found tracks of a passing sailback but those had been days old already. Nevertheless, we reached the bottom, detected by nothing.

I was about to relax when Mom snuck around a bend, nearly colliding with a very injured predator with a frayed and torn spine sail. It was missing its left eye and about half of the left front leg and had crusted, deep wounds all over its body. It likely was as surprised to see us as we were to see it. Otherwise, we’d probably have been dead in an instant.

But my mother, recovering from her shock faster than either I or the crippled sailback did, spun around and legged it out of there. Not a moment too soon.

The monster might have been heavily injured but it most definitely still had more than enough mana to collapse the gorge around us. It tried.

Thankfully, Mom and Hiska had managed to learn Energy Absorption by then and the subsequent fight turned into a battle of exhaustion. I didn’t get to see most of it since the adults dropped us off one after the other as soon as they had a chance to break away from the battle for long enough to safely do so.

In the end, they managed to kill it. My lessons in efficiency had paid off and the sailback eventually ran out of mana. After it lost its remaining eye, the adults tore into it until it was more shredded than whole.

Both Sarka and Hiska didn’t get away entirely unharmed, however. Hiska had a broken leg and Sarka probably had a concussion after getting hit in the head by a stray boulder.

So we had to stay in the area and wait for them to heal up a bit. At least we had a massive food source lying right there. Once I had set Hiska’s bone and wrapped it up with a splint and lots of my newly ‘invented’ rope, I crawled all over and even through most of the monster’s corpse, looking for the main prize of this almost-fiasco. Its Earth-Mana gland.

Mom and Sarka were eagerly helping me after I explained to them what I was doing. It wasn’t in the spine sail as I originally expected. There surprisingly must have been a Heat-Mana gland in there somewhere but that one was obviously damaged by whatever the sailback had fought before us. At least that was what I gathered from the high concentration of Heat-Mana in that part of the body.

I eventually found the Earth-Mana gland in its stomach among the innards. It was a massive organ and I had no idea what its mundane function was. Maybe some kind of liver? It wasn’t a direct part of the digestive tract at least.

Well, it wasn’t that important. I’d have eaten it no matter what it was. Even if it had tasted absolutely disgusting, which it didn’t. The potential gains were simply too massive to pass it over.

I shared with everyone, of course. Mom, Sarka and Hiska pretty much walled us and the dead sailback in for several days of constant eating and digesting.

It was enough to finally tip me over into having enough mana in my system to find my own Earth-Mana organ. It was my second stomach. Yeah, I apparently had one of those, too. Not a uniquely female organ it seemed.

I couldn’t help but wonder how massive the increase would have been if the monster didn’t exhaust most of its mana before death. Something to be tested in the future, for sure.

But what was far more important now: I finally, finally, finally… had my magic back!

I burst into euphoric giggles, laughter - well, our hissing equivalents at least - and trills as I consciously pumped my Earth-Mana to map out the rest of my body. There were three other glands. My heart, my lungs and… my bladder? They weren’t anywhere near full enough to use them yet, although the one in my heart was probably the next in line, but it was nice to know that they were there. Three whole more affinities to unlock!

Next, I expelled a bit of mana to absorb it back right away. And what can I say? It was like riding a bicycle. It might have been a new one and it felt a bit different, but the process was very much the same as in my scalamander body. I was pretty sure that my profile would have shown a proficiency for Energy Absorption if I had access to it.

And to the joy and envy of my mother, Sarka, and Hiska, I managed to directly manipulate the Ambient Energy around me after practising for merely two days.

“No way!” Hiska exclaimed as she watched the rock I was levitating through the cavern. “You must be cheating!”

“But there is none of his mana in there,” Sarka said. “Look!” She inserted her own mana into the small rock and I instantly lost control of it.

“Hey!” I complained. “I wasn’t finished with that yet!”

“Not as useful as you made it seem when you lose it so easily,” Hiska turned to me with a smug expression. “Isn’t that right, little one?”

“Maybe not for fighting. But didn’t you pay attention when I told you again and again that you don’t need any ‘Fuel’ for direct manipulation, old lady?” I snapped back.

She recoiled in jest. “Old lady?!”

“I’ll still be able to fight when none of you have any mana left if you don’t learn direct manipulation too. Just saying.” I pointed with my arms and tail at one of the adults each.

“Why, you little cocky shit!” Hiska growled while lunging herself at me.

We ended up playfully scuffling around for quite some time. Triga initially cheered her mother on for a while before eventually joining in a free-for-all.

Mom watched on with a smile, making sure that none of us took it too far. Hiska still had a broken leg after all and was much bigger and stronger than me or her daughter.

Sarka diligently kept the rock she had taken from me hovering. I was sure she tried to keep it floating while lowering the amount of her mana present in it. Kress watched her mother with just as much attention. They talked too quietly with each other for me to make out words, until Kress finally gathered enough courage to join us in our playfight.

It was a fun, boisterous few days with next to no worries. A long overdue downtime after all the constant tension we’ve been under on the move.

When we did move on we hadn’t managed to consume even half of the sailback. But it started to rot and that wasn’t just gross - which I would have been used to by now - but also unhealthy. All the residue mana in the flesh was long gone anyway, so it really wasn’t worth it.

I was ‘allowed’ to walk on my own now, though, and Mom took over carrying Triga. Hiska was still recovering from her broken leg, so the extra weight would have been bad.

Besides more rope, I also had crafted a new set of spears for everyone. I tried to make them ideal for throwing. They were solid stone though, so carrying too many of them with us was pretty much out.

I levitated my own next to me most of the time.

Walking by myself, dashing from cover to cover, was as exhausting as I thought it would be. I still preferred it over being carried around like luggage.

It left less time to focus on my magic training, but I had enough stuff to relearn in the evenings and nights with my earth magic alone. There were lots of kinks to work out and relearning everything I once could do without the help of a sensory organ and much reduced ambient energy was… very time-consuming. So I was in no particular hurry to add more affinities quite yet.

To make up for the lack of a mana-sensitive tongue, I got into the habit of constantly ‘feeling out’ the ambient Earth Energy all around me.

It was on a typical dry and hot morning - pretty close to noon - when I woke up something very dangerous, doing just that.

I had noticed a marginal increase in ambient energy for some time, we were following it to its source in the hopes of finally giving the adults a chance to practise in a more saturated environment.

I honestly should have known what we would find.

I mean, what produces ambient energy in the first place? Previous me knew all that and I really should have expected it.

It still took me by surprise when suddenly the loose dried out earth all around us started to violently shake and a crack. Then it… rose and… stood up. With me still on top. A deep and terrifying rumble permeated the ground and air, originating from seemingly everywhere.

I had no control whatsoever over the ground beneath my feet.

Because I wasn’t standing on real ground.

I had apparently woken up an elemental. And it was definitely not a morning person.

Not at all.