My deadline is almost up. Three days seem to have passed by in a flash. The last time I was on the surface, the sun was already heading towards its zenith, and I’ve been underground for hours. When it touches the horizon, the alliance between the dragon-like alcaoris and me will be over.

If I haven’t demonstrated my solution to allowing his eggs to incubate in a perfect environment without causing unknown consequences to the local environment by then, my opportunity will be gone. Not to mention that I’ll fail that objective in my Quest, and who knows what consequences that will cause.

But I’m almost there; I’m so close I can feel it.

Sitting once more on the floor of the tunnel deep below the ground, I try to connect again with the magic around me.

To get Fire-Shaping, I had to learn to both transform my mana into fire magic, and then shape that fire magic. Earth magic is different from fire magic. That’s obvious. But I would imagine that getting Earth-Shaping will require the same things as Fire-Shaping.

I have two problems though. First, I have an issue with image. Fire felt more familiar to me and has always been more fascinating than the ground beneath my feet which I’ve rarely even thought about. But I think I’m getting to grips with this one.

My second issue is about discovering exactly how to change my mana into earth magic. With fire, I had the advantage of being able to feed my mana to the fire and watch how it was transformed before attempting to do it myself. I can’t do that here. The earth magic in the stone around me is willing to accept my mana, but doesn’t seem to do anything with it.

Fire grabs anything it can and eagerly transforms it into flame, using it to grab even more. Earth just…sits there. Perhaps this is my Fire affinity working against me here, but I’m really struggling to find a way around it.

I sigh in frustration. It would have been so much easier if I could have got Kalanthia’s help with this. I bet I could have bribed her to do the job for me and this would have been done days ago. But the alcaoris was dead set against allowing another beast near his eggs, especially not one as powerful as he realised Kalanthia is.

It’s not surprising, thinking about it. And I have no way of assuring him that Kalanthia won’t do something to his eggs – I have no control over her. It’s annoying, though.

I did consider going back up to the cave and asking her to demonstrate some Earth-shaping for me, but decided against it. My reasoning was that it would take a good day to get there and then another to get back, limiting my learning time to only one day. That would have been a short time frame at the best of times, and I had no guarantee that her demonstrating Earth-shaping would actually be informative enough for me to learn the Skill in a single day.

So instead, I decided to try to do it by myself. At the same time, we haven’t been idle in trying to find other solutions. My various Bound have been working as hard as me on a number of other avenues which seemed possible.

River and Tarra have been working on alchemical options to melt stone, but haven’t found any good solutions. Unfortunately, it seems that Tarra’s Transfusion Ability counts as magic, and so when she uses it to enhance the strength of a dissolving potion, the earth magic in the stone resists it. Trying to concentrate the mixtures has had only limited effect – really, from the sounds of it, we either need more powerful ingredients or better processes. Without a pocket laboratory, however, the latter is difficult, and the former is unachievable in our time frame.

Bastet’s idea of damming up the tunnel and letting the Energy accumulate behind it was a good one, but tests with the open pool at the centre of the vine-stranglers proved it unworkable. Testing with various items showed that Pure Energy appears to have a tendency to dissolve most materials put into it, given enough time.

Stone lasted the longest, though even then normal stones from the surface dissolved within a few hours, but the main issue would be making a wall of stones watertight. Without cement, we’d have to use mud or clay, both of which proved to dissolve very quickly.

I did ask the alcaoris whether he could use the same substance which is currently holding the eggs in place to hold the dam together, but he refused. I don’t know why and he wouldn’t explain, frustratingly.

It’s still a possibility, though one which would require significantly more hands-on effort than I would like since we’d have to keep replacing the sections which are dissolving. It would also risk whoever was working on it coming into direct contact with the Pure Energy; I can attest personally that this wouldn’t be a good idea.

Various other possibilities were suggested and attempted, but nothing has worked so far. Which means I have to get Earth-shaping - it’s the only option left with a reasonable chance of success. Perhaps even if I don’t manage to make a hole in the tunnel floor, I will still be able to make the same kind of rock that makes up the tunnel walls – evidently they aren’t able to be dissolved. Then I can use Bastet’s solution without risk.

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Stretching for a moment, I settle back into place and close my eyes. Not even trying to touch the magic around me at this point, I focus on settling my inner self. I might be feeling the pressure of time, and the frustration of my constant failures, but if I let them take over, I will definitely fail.

Breathing in and out slowly, I feel the air around me. Caves always have a cool, clammy feel. Even my little alcove at home has it. It almost makes me shiver, the cold seeping through my clothes to my skin, through my skin to my muscles, through my muscles to my bones.

Warmth surrounds me and, opening my eyes, I realise that Aingeal has reacted to my discomfort to expand and bathe me in its fiery heat.

“Thanks little guy,” I tell it gratefully, sending the emotion towards the little fire elemental. “But I need to feel the cold.” It sends back a sense of disappointment and longing, making me feel like it’s a puppy who I’ve just stopped from climbing onto my lap. I send it a sense of apology, but firm decision regardless – like that puppy, I don’t want my actual instructions to be undermined by my regret in giving them.

Closing my eyes again, I suddenly realise something.

Being in a cave makes me feel uncomfortable. I like the sun, the fresh air, the feeling of being free. That realisation would have surprised my previous self from before I came here: when I was on Earth I barely ever spent time outdoors. All my life was spent either in an office, or at home. Or occasionally a shop when I needed to buy something. I didn’t really take the time to go for a walk; I lived in a city so even if I had, I wouldn’t have really had the sun or fresh air, let alone nature. And most of my experiences with being in nature were bad.

But here, I’ve come to an appreciation for the outdoors that I’d never have believed that I would one day have. To be in a cave feels…like being trapped once more. Even if there’s no hum of a computer, and the damp coolness could never be mistaken for my stuffy office, there are still too many similarities. The office which used to be my refuge would now be my prison.

I wonder if this is where my blockage is. With fire, I was wary of the damage it could do, but I like fire. I was interested in what it did, happy to stare at flames for untold minutes, watching their flickering dance. The earth is a different question. Frankly, all the time trying to mentally ‘stare’ at it has been like watching paint dry.

Opening my eyes, I lean against the tunnel wall and gaze sightlessly at the other side. Didn’t Kalanthia say something about how she learned to shape the earth after coming to an appreciation for it?

I flick through my memories until I land upon the one that I want. She said to ‘feel the earth’, but it certainly seemed like she had an appreciation for it, I say to myself. She talked about tearing the earth to shreds to express her frustration and anger, and learning endurance and inevitable action from it.

Although I wouldn’t say that was exactly what happened with fire, perhaps that’s the point: fire and earth are different. Maybe I need to stop approaching earth the way I do fire, and try just…feeling it.

Instead of sitting, I lie down on the floor of the tunnel and relax into it. I let the coolness seep into me without trying to reject it or feeling uncomfortable at the cold. I even ask Aingeal to move a little away when the sensation of heat bobbing close to my skin becomes distracting. It isn’t happy, but does what I ask it to do.

There, I push my fears and worries away and do my best to just be.

The cold isn’t too bad. Especially not to my more-resistant body. On a hot summer’s day, I would be very grateful for it. And though the tunnel is small, there’s enough space for me to stretch out. I would be very grateful for the roof over my head if it was raining.

And it’s peaceful. Soothing. The magic around me is calm, practically unmoving. It’s not like fire – there, nothing is ever still. Fire is in constant motion, and always searching for the next thing to consume. Earth is…peaceful. Content. It’s like the earth has no need to move, to consume, because it already has everything it needs.

I suddenly find myself yearning for that sense of contentment. For that peace. Everything recently has seemed to be so…fraught. The last three days have been a desperate rush to try to find a solution so I can complete the most immediate and urgent objective of the quest. Before that were all the fights to take control of the samuran village. Before that was dealing with the vine-stranglers. And before that was the preparation to do the former two tasks. In fact, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to just…be. With no pressure, no objectives to fulfil. Even back on Earth there was always the next project, the next deadline.

So here and now, with the pressure of the quest time limit pushed as far away as I can, it’s nice to just lie down and feel connected to the earth around me.

Slowly, as time passes – and I refuse to allow that to impact my feeling of peace – I realise that the earth is really an undervalued part of, well, everything. Without earth, we would have no solid surface on which to walk. We’d either be a bubble of liquid, or a planet made of gas. We’d have no soil, and without soil we’d have no trees, bushes, or other plants. Without all the flora, none of the beasts would be able to survive either.

Fire might be a force for both destruction and creation, but earth really is the bedrock of all life.

Is it any surprise that earth is therefore used to form the arteries of the planet which pump its lifeblood around everywhere it’s needed? Earth is steady; it’s reliable. Unlike fire, it is slow to anger. Yet its anger is just as dangerous – and can be just as quick to erupt.

Like a landslide, years in the making and then abruptly releasing its fury on anyone around. Or like a volcano, its internal chambers building up pressure over decades until, in a single moment, it explodes.

Fire and earth are not so different in that: when their fury is allowed to build up, they both have immense power, and none can stand against them. But where fire burns itself out as soon as it has no more fuel to power its rage, earth doesn’t need any fuel: it’s already everything it needs.

Reaching out with my mental sense, feeling almost in a trance with how peaceful my mind and how heavy my body are, I touch the magic around me.