Stupid, stupid, stupid! I cursed inwardly as I tried to keep my balance on top of the shaking sentient hill. Of course, there would be a source for all the Earth Energy where its concentration was thickest!

“Don’t attack! Run away!” I hissed as loud as I could, hoping that mom and the others could hear me over all the rumbling and cracking of moving ground.

I had made the very dangerous and false assumption that we had stumbled across an area with generally higher saturation of Ambient Energy, not just the Earth-type I could ‘perceive’. And I had done that simply because that was the status quo I’d been ‘used to’ from my memories. I should have questioned why areas like this would exist in the current world in the first place. But no! Of course, I hadn’t. I’d been so stupid!

I felt the gathering of Earth Energy in the ‘ground’ beneath me and instantly launched myself backwards. Just in time to avoid a pillar of compact earth and gravel erupting upwards where I’d been standing.

Well, at least it wasn’t a spike. So I assumed the elemental didn’t want to kill us all outright. Probably. Right?

“Griss!” I heard a panicked hiss from somewhere to my right. I wasn’t sure who it was, but it sounded far enough away to be out of the immediate danger zone.

“I’m fine!” I roared back. “Stay away! Don’t attack!”

The situation was still salvageable. Deep breaths. Focus! Just a grumpy elemental. There wasn’t any kind of grievance yet. I’ve dealt with those before. Well… not ‘me’-me but… Argh, you know what I mean. I could handle that.

First, however, I had to get some firm ground beneath my feet that wasn’t part of its body. I stumbled and nearly slipped while dodging another earthen pillar shooting out of its skin.

See! It didn’t want me up here either! Now… how could I get down without breaking half of the bones in my body? Hiska’s still broken arm had shown me that I couldn’t be as callous with injuries as I’d been in my previous body. Trarks apparently didn’t heal nearly as fast as scalamanders did.

Dodge. Evade. Small steps. Don’t get pinned down. Can’t be far now…

One of the pillars I’d avoided before suddenly came crashing down towards me. It looked a bit like a very malformed stubby rock tentacle. I desperately scrambled out of its path, only narrowly saving my tail from being squished flat.

Which was exactly when another pillar erupted from beneath where I found myself now, slamming into my belly and catapulting me upwards and away from the irate elemental. The ‘punch’ pressed all the air out of my lungs, literally taking my breath away as I was sent flying.

Fuck, that hurt! And right as I’d nearly made it to the edge!

So much for not getting my body mangled. Even if it wasn’t quite yet, the impact would surely cripple me. I tried to inhale deeply, only resulting in hyperventilation.

I felt weightless for a moment. Then the ground started approaching again. This couldn’t be how this ended. Not like this!

I saw Mom, Hiska and Sarka running towards where I’d probably land. They’d be too slow. At least they weren’t engaged in a senseless fight with the earth elemental.

I didn’t exactly have much time to contemplate that at the moment, though. I was amazed that I could perceive and process so much in this short amount of time in the first place. Must be Curiosity’s Trait, right?

And where the hell did my stone spear end up? I must have lost it quite early on. Maybe carrying it solely magically wasn’t the brightest idea.

No! Focus! I was hit in the belly, not the head. I shouldn’t be as fuzzy and easily distracted as I was at the moment.

I didn’t have enough mana to help me here. But the area was saturated with Earth Energy! I didn’t have much fine control but… maybe… If I just used enough volume?

I didn’t have enough time for anything else anyway. Desperately flailing around in the air, I sent as much mana as I could downwards to have an easier time manipulating the Energy in the ground remotely. Then I instantly formed a spike that shot upwards to greet me.

I heard Mom scream. It probably looked like the elemental was trying to skewer me from afar. Well, I couldn’t be considerate of her at the moment. I didn’t have any other ideas and I very much wanted to reach the ground with most of my body intact.

As soon as the spike reached my height, narrowly passing by, I slammed my hands and feet into it as hard as I could, digging in with my sharp claws to bleed off as much speed as possible as I slid down along it. I still hit the ground with a higher velocity than I would recommend, but bruises are better than broken bones. My fingers and toes hurt like hell and I had broken quite a few claws in the process, but it could have been far worse.

“Griss!” I heard my mother again. “Baby! Are you alright?” Her hisses were agitated and full of worry. I couldn’t respond, though, still fighting for breath even after my ‘landing’. When I looked in the direction of her voice, I was just glad to see that they weren’t pursued by the grumpy earth elemental I had woken up.

I finally managed to suck in a large amount of air and get up when the others reached me and I was tackled to the ground again by Mom.

“Don’t move! Let me check you!” was all she said before she examined me all over with her tongue.

She was shaking. As was Triga on her back. The little girl looked wide-eyed at me, my earth spike, back to the earth elemental, frantically glancing everywhere around. Her little heart must have gotten quite the workout. She didn’t say anything, however. Quite the opposite of her mother who approached next.

“We have to get away from here. Can he walk? Otherwise, I’ll carry him.” She too sounded worried.

Aww. I didn’t know she cared so much. I was quite touched.

I checked again if there was any further activity from the elemental. There wasn’t. Well, at least it didn’t come closer. It stayed pretty much where it was, moving only slightly from time to time. I was pretty sure it was watching us, though.

“I’m fine, Hiska,” I finally managed to say. “Just… let me catch my breath.”

Hiska eyed my blood slowly dripping from countless little cuts, Mom was still frantically licking, and didn’t seem very convinced. “Then hop on! You can catch your breath while we run from that… thing.”

I tried to untangle myself from my mother’s ministrations with little success. “You can stop, Mom. I’ll be fine. Promise.”

“Are you sure?” she hissed back.

“Completely. Trust me?”

She trilled in affirmation and took a few steps back.

I carefully got up on my feet again.

“Hey! Don’t dally around!” Hiska growled impatiently. “We. Need. To. Leave! We can’t fight that monster.”

“No, we don’t have to,” I said. “It didn’t do anything after throwing me off, did it?”

“No, it-” Mom began but was immediately interrupted.

“Why would that matter?” Hiska fumed. “It’s stupidly dangerous!”

“I think it is watching us,” Sarka said. She’d been oddly quiet so far.

“It didn’t come closer since it threw you here,” Mom said, worriedly eyeing my earth spike again.

“That’s great,” I replied. “You didn’t attack it right? That means I still can try to communicate with it.”

“You want to what?” Hiska exploded. “Hessa, I don’t care if he has magic memories. Your son is insane! We need to leave before that monstrosity decides to come after us.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s an elemental,” I interjected before Mom could reply. “A proto-spirit. I told you about them?”

Hiska seemed shocked at that, turning back towards the elemental as if seeing it for the first time.

“And you know this one?” Mom asked. “From… before?”

That was a good question, wasn’t it? “I honestly don’t know. I could. I’ve met a few earth elementals before, but those were all rather… ‘muddy’.” I chuckled. “It could be one of them. Unlikely but entirely possible as that is. But I wouldn’t have any way to be sure but to ask it directly and hope it remembers.”

“Why do you wanna talk with it in the first place?” Hiska demanded to know.

Mom rolled her eyes. Sarka sighed but didn’t comment.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “You remember why we’re here in the first place, right? Elementals produce Ambient Energy. If you want to learn Manipulation, I couldn’t think of a better place to learn it than right next to the source. So I at least have to check if it could be friendly.”

“Are you kidding me? Friendly?! After it battered you like that?” Hiska didn’t let up.

“Well, how do you react whenever a fly wakes you up early in the morning?” I countered. “You thrash around and shoo it away. I’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, okay. But what will you do if it attacks again?”

“Em, guys?” Sarka tried to interject.

Hiska ignored her. “I don’t want to get caught up in this stupid idea. So keep me out of it.”

“I never said you should come with me,” I said. “On the contrary. Please stay away while I try to talk with it.”

“Guys?” Saka tried again, cutting off Hiska’s no doubt snappy reply. “It’s coming towards us.”

“Fucking fantastic!” Hiska cursed.

I shot Mom a pleading look.

She didn’t seem happy with my plan either. “Griss, are you sure?”

“I’m sure. But keep your distance, just in case.” I took another measure of the Ambient Energy around me. It had increased significantly after all the attacks the elemental had thrown around earlier. It should be enough to at least defend myself at a distance. I wasn’t confident in directly wrestling over control in close-quarter combat. Not with an elemental at least. Not yet. “If things go awry, run.”

Mom trilled. “I trust you, baby. I don’t like it, but I trust you.”

Hiska scoffed and started to protest again, but I didn’t listen anymore. She was arguing with Mom now anyway.

I exchanged a look with Sarka as I slowly walked past her, to meet the elemental who was leisurely approaching us like the slowest avalanche ever. I wasn’t sure what I saw in her eyes. Was it encouragement? Faith? Well, at least one of the adults believed I knew what I was doing.

I regarded the sentient mass of rocks and dirt again that I was about to try to engage in conversation with. I did know what I was doing. Right?

The idea had been a simple one and derived itself from one of the greater annoyances of my last life. Most proto-spirits I had encountered were terrible gossips. And what did they use to gossip with each other? Well, my very own pictogram language, of course.

Naturally, I couldn’t rely on my symbols still being around in a completely unaltered state. Not if Trigger’s learning and memorisation abilities had been any indication. But no matter how far away from here I might have lived in my previous life, since my current race managed to spread to here, it was nearly certain that the distance wasn’t too far away for the ‘elemental gossip network’ either.

So, a bit battered as I was, I confidently left the others behind and strode towards the moving, thinking heap of gravel and earth. I didn’t look back to check if the others heeded my advice and kept their distance. I couldn’t allow myself to take my eyes off the elemental.

I was pretty sure I had never met this particular proto-spirit before. But I still had to go through quite a few memories of scalamander-me. So I could have been wrong about that.

I stopped my approach when the earth elemental was close enough to throw something at me. I erected an earth wall to intercept the projectile. Once it impacted with very little force, I examined it. It was the upper half of my now broken stone spear. All of my mana was gone from it. Was the proto-spirit trying to harm me, telling me to not approach closer, or just returning my ‘property’? I was slightly confused.

Well, this was as good a place to start as any. No need to get any closer yet. So I reformed a part of my earthen wall into words.

‘[greetings] - [friend] - [peace] - [apology] - [?] [name]’

The elemental suddenly stopped. It gathered itself together, looking more like a hill than an avalanche again. Then it formed symbols of its own.

I was about to rejoice when I noticed that I couldn’t recognise a single one of them at first glance. Don’t get me wrong. They looked very similar to my pictograms. If Trigger had forgotten and ‘remembered’ them a few times and Ripple embellished them to be more ‘esthetically pleasing’ afterwards.

Still, that was undoubtedly my language. Did this one on the far left look a bit like [hello]? And that other one looked suspiciously like a very fancy [dude].

Yeah. I probably could work with that. I glanced up at the sky, then back to where I had left the others behind.

“This will probably take a while!” I ‘shouted’.

When I turned back to the elemental, it had formed new text. ‘[something] [something] [loud] - [something] [down] [dude]’

It didn’t make much sense yet, but I could work with that. I still let out a slightly annoyed sigh. At least I had ‘Keen Eye for Detail’. Otherwise, this would probably take ages.

It was nearly sundown before I was confident that I understood most of Quake’s script.

Quake. What a fitting name. I definitely hadn’t met this elemental before. But the naming sense was quite similar to previous me’s modus operandi.

It had eagerly told me its name after I revealed mine. It got way too excited once I told it by the way.

‘[I still can’t believe that you’re that Sweetie, dude!] [They all said, Sweetie was a chick. You don’t feel like a chick, dude.] [No offence. I can’t really tell by looking with your species.]’

At least that’s what I would transcribe Quake’s ramblings as. The elemental was quite a bit less coherent. But I was confident by now that I got the gist of it.

‘[I am male this time, yes.] [So, they still talk about me, huh?]’, I replied.

‘[Oh, they totally do, dude!]’ The sentient hill bounced up and down, making the earth shake dangerously. ‘[They won’t believe me when I tell’em I met you.]’

Yeah… I could imagine that would be a hard sell after all this time. Quake hadn’t been able to tell me how long it had been since I died last by the way. At least I refused to see [a long ass time] as an accurate estimation of… anything really.

I also came to the conclusion that this particular elemental wasn’t exactly safe to be around. I had to dodge and shield myself from more than a few projectiles whenever it made any sudden moves. And the frequent earthquakes didn’t make it any better. Definitely not safe for kids… or structures of any kind.

‘[So sorry for flinging you around like that earlier. You sure you can’t stay? I don’t mind, ya know?]’, Quake asked probably for the fourth time.

I supposed it might have been quite a bit lonely. Or it wanted to have us stay around so it could feed on the Raw Energy that was freed up again whenever we used any mana?

It would undoubtedly be very beneficial to at least stay in the area for a while. I wanted the adults to finally get the hang of Ambient Energy Manipulation after all. But staying to close would simply be dangerous. It was no wonder that we’d seen so few beasts in the area despite the high energy saturation. Who’d want to live near an unpredictable natural catastrophe?

‘[We will probably stay in the area for a while.]’, I admitted. ‘[I first have to get my family… em… used to someone like you, though.] [They’ve never met an elemental before and are probably quite scared of you.]’

The gigantic pile of sentient rubble visibly deflated at that.

‘[No offence!]’, I hastily added.

‘[No worries, dude. I understand. Just come by and hang a bit before ya leave. ‘kay?]’

‘[I’ll definitely do that]’, I wrote. ‘[It was nice meeting you.]’

When I finally returned to where I had left the others, only Sarka was waiting for me. She only stared at me with wonder in her eyes, not saying anything. I didn’t know how to react to that.

It was so awkward.

“You’ve found a shelter for the night while I was talking with the elemental?” I finally broke the silence.

She blinked, slightly shaking her head as if to defuse whatever thoughts she might have dwelled on.

“Yes. Yes, we did. You’ve ‘talked’ with that … elemental for half a day after all.” She grinned. “I’ll lead you to the cave we found.”

“Thank you, Sarka.” I fell into step beside her, carefully following her silent lead from cover to cover.

My body ached all over and I slowly began to fall behind.

She noticed, of course, and gently picked me up so I could rest on her back for the rest of the way.

“You’re still so young,” she growled quietly. “It’s easy to forget, considering how you behave most of the time. Despite you being so small, I think only Hessa really still sees you as a child.”

I snorted. “Not Hiska?”

“Oh, definitely not Hiska. She tries to hide it but I think she’s a bit afraid of you.”

I thought about that for a bit before I replied. “I’m not sure. I think she’s more afraid of accidentally getting her hopes up to find Home again. There’s a reason I didn’t mention to her that I could ask the elemental for directions.”

“Oh.” Sarka stiffened for a moment. “And… did it give you any? Directions?”

I suppressed a laugh. “Nah. Most of the time I had to spend learning its slang. And it’s not particularly bright. Which makes it more dangerous rather than less by the way. But I’m pretty sure it could at least point us towards other proto-spirits we could ask about it.”

“You really think we could find it?” Sarka asked tentatively.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I doubt Home as it was when our ancestors left still exists. But I’m confident that we could find the Guardians again. They were Spirits, after all, you know?”

“I see. But if we find them, we don’t have to run and hide anymore, right?” She sounded more hopeful than I had ever heard her. “We could raise our children in peace without fear?”

I snuggled against her. “Don’t worry, Sarka. Even if we don’t find Home. Once you’ve learned everything about magic that I can teach you, there will be absolutely no reason to hide anymore either way.”

“Hmm,” she hissed. “After today, I can believe that.”

She had an elated bounce in her steps until we finally reached the natural cavern the others were resting in.