Chapter

Half an hour later Mikel sat in a puddle of damp - he’d never sweat so much in his life, nor had he ever felt so tired. It was as if someone with a giant Stamina sucking needle had stuck it into him and drained him dry.

Of course, that was nonsense. Mikel had been the one drawing out the Stamina, not a guy with a needle - and although it had drained him, the effort hadn’t been wasted.

The Monitor shimmered brightly in the dimness of the library, the white letters and words standing out in sharp contrast.

A bar Mikel hadn’t noticed before sat in the upper right-hand corner with a little more than half of its total volume filled in white. After the dozenth time he’d shifted Stamina from Nodd to Essentia in Teff, the bar had stopped flashing and grown still and solid. The white portion of the bar had grown with each bit of Stamina wrought Essentia he fed to the little slate tablet.

“You said… I had to do that how many times to master it?” Mikel heaved as he tried to stave off exhaustion from swallowing him whole.

“A few thousand. If you’re slow, a few ten thousand or more. It’s entirely up to you.”

Mikel wiped the sweat from his soaked face and flicked it aside, too tired to even groan.

After a moment to collect himself he once again summoned up the image of The Callisto Jewel and watched as the slate scrolled through what Librarian had informed him were abilities he might learn one day.

A moment later the scroll settled on the ability the slate had brought him to earlier.

Incarnadine Metafora

Effect: Move your body from current location to location 20-50 yds. distant you can perceive with some ocular capacity.

“You become Blood. As our Goddess traveled so shall you. On a tide of crimson wrath, ride into eternity.”

Essentia Cost - 50

Stamina Cost - 0

Health Cost - 0

Cooldown - 10 minutes

On a whim, he poked it and his eyes went wide as the feeling of something… Dense rushed up his arm first into The Gate near his heart, then both Teff and Nodd simultaneously. His body pulsed and the exhaustion he felt vanished immediately.

“What in hel was that?”

“Your body just learned the schema for the ability Incarnadine Metafora.”

“Mind elaborating?”

“In short, you now know the basics of the Skill Incarnadine Metafora. If I’m correct, it should be able to transport you beyond the Dead Tide blocking your way.”

“Yeah, but why am I not tired anymore? It feels like I just took a great nap and ate something. I feel… Stronger than ever.”

He flexed as if to make his point.

“Some abilities have hidden effects - it appears Incarnadine Metafora grants some Stamina back to your body when learned. Convenient for what you have to do next.”

“Get past the Tide?”

“Correct.”

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He read over the description again and nodded before shrugging.

“It seems simple enough,” He said, “Hardest part I see is going to be getting enough Essentia to do this. Fifty doesn’t seem like a lot - especially after how hard it was to just wake up the monitor. How much Essentia did I feed into Monitor anyway? I have a feeling I’ll have this Skill mastered in no time flat.”

“Twenty-five Essentia. Each of your transmutations yielded one-fifth of a single shred of Essentia. To perform the Skill, at your current conversion coefficient, you need 125 Stamina Units, not counting the few you will fail and lose to convert to 50 Essentia units. That is double what you just fed into the monitor.

Mikel did the mental math and groaned - it had taken him half an hour to get 25 units, 50 would take him an hour or better. The prospect was daunting.

The only reason he felt it was possible at all, was because of the stamina regeneration he got upon learning Incarnadine. If the Skill hadn’t granted him a boost in Stamina, he would have been sunk. He wondered if he had enough Stamina available to conduct the needed operation. He wondered if he would still be alive after. He wondered if he would die right then and there, either to his own stupidity, bad luck or pile of walking dead bodies. He wondered if he’d make it out of this library alive.

“A couple ten thousand times, right?” Mikel asked.

“That is correct, Mikel. Better get started now.”

He readjusted away from the damp spot, to another spot so he wouldn’t get sweat on the books, and brought up the dark background in his mind of what he was starting to call The Resource Field, and then got to work.

***

Nearly an hour later and more tired than he’d ever been, he slumped to the floor while barely holding onto the mental image of a collection of shimmering, blue/white strands.

“Librarian… I did it,” he heaved the words out as if they weighed as much as a boulder, “I collected the 50 units of Essentia… Now what?”

During this process Mikel had only lost a few strands of Stamina he’d begun with - but because each sliver of Essentia he was able to create took 5 strands of Stamina, each loss was compounded five times over.

“Are you ready to move?”

“I guess I have to be,” Mikel said as he stood up, leveraging his arm back and under him to get positioned.

“Go out into the aisle, but be as discreet as possible. The Tide can’t see very well, but if you make yourself obvious they will notice you.”

Mikel nodded and gingerly stepped into the aisle. He glanced behind only once to check for any new activity before turning back to the seething tide ahead of him.

“Now what?” He asked, not liking the feeling of exposure standing in the middle of the path imparted on him.

“Now, with the Essentia in your mind, focus on the words Incarnadine Metafora. Your body will read the intent and focus the Essentia where it needs to go - in this case, the Callisto Jewel. Make sure to keep your intended target in mind though - if you don’t you stand the risk of shooting off to a random location within your range.”

“Sounds good to me,” He said as he placed one hand on his sword and the other over the covered Callisto Jewel on his chest.

Gods guide my hand he thought as he fixed his gaze at a spot he could just make out beyond the tide of bodies and brought the words of the Skill into his mind.

Incarnadine Metafora.

Instantly The Callisto Jewel flared cold and froze the skin it was in contact with on his chest and the skin of his palm. He would have shouted had his lungs been filled with air - but as reality had it, as soon as the Skill gobbled up the Essentia in one tremendous seizure, his body ceased being made of flesh and bone.

To Mikel, it felt as if his entire being had been replaced by hot, sticky blood that filled every atom of space within his being. There was a sense of moving and a subtle shift in his perception of reality.

Then, before he could panic, the feeling of thick ichor vanished and lay in a pile on the flagstone floors, heaving breath after breath as sweat poured from his body. Heat poured off of him in waves and it was all he could do to keep conscious.

“You did it, congratulations,” Librarian said from somewhere near Mikel’s ear, “You just enacted your first Skill - although routed through the Callisto Jewel and not bound in your body yet, you managed it. Look and see where you’re at.”

Mikel picked up his heavy head and looked backward from the way he’d felt the motion of blood seething begin from and would have gasped had he not already been fighting for air.

He was beyond the Dead Tide by thirty yards and through their shambling mass he could see the bookcase where he’d hid for the past two or so hours while learning how to manipulate the resources within his body.

The fact that he’d traveled that far, that fast was astounding. It was as if his body had simply ceased being in one spot and began again where he sat now.

He didn’t want to think of the feeling of his body turning into blood so soon after the fact.

“Will I always be this tired?” He asked, as he shifted and pulled his sword into a better position. He was far enough away from the Dead Tide that he felt safe sitting for a moment. They hadn’t seen him when he was closer on the other side, after all.

“Until your body becomes more efficient with your Stamina shifting to Essentia, you will be. Either that or you could find a way to unlock your natural access to Essentia. If you continue to have to use the shift you will always be magnitudes behind your peers. You’ll be able to use Essentia-based Skills, but they will be weaker, slower, and less efficient.”

“Great. Just what Celine told me,” Mikel said as he began to look around.

He’d arrived at a crossroads similar to other crossroads he’d come across on the way to the Dead Tide and he wasn’t surprised to see more and more shelves vanishing into the darkness in all directions. The guiding light still hung in the air, closer to where he’d begun, but now accessible through a turn to his right which up until the Dead Tide, had been a solid wall.

The thought of a book being inconvenient, for any reason, had been foreign to Mikel until now. Now, part of him wished that some people just shut up and didn’t write down everything that popped into their heads. He would’ve probably been at the guiding light by now if that had been the case.

He levered himself up once more and began to walk to his right - down the corridor formed from books, upon books upon books.