Erik smiled at him, and it made Oskar happy to see it. He dug a little longer, and then traded out with Fox, feeling like the sand was pouring in almost as fast as they were digging it out. Touwon had produced a small Kobold sized digging tool and was using it until Fox climbed the mound for her turn at digging, and he handed it to her.
“He didn’t offer it to me,” Oskar mumbled, making Fox laugh at him with that unique, almost unhinged laugh of hers. They’d all spent most of the night laughing at Erik’s exaggerated stories about Oskar, and Fox had laughed more in those hours than he’d ever heard her laugh.
If she ever wants to talk about her origins, she will. Besides, it changes nothing. It doesn’t matter what she is other than my friend.
He rested as he watched her work. Her strength belied her small stature, and he was again thankful to have the Kobolds and his brother here with him.
Penny, and I guess the calico, too.
He watched the small multicolored cat nuzzle into Touwon’s bag, treating it like it was a cat bed.
Not a cat bed, her cat bed.
It was a curious questions as to why the calico stayed when Bastet’s power left, but questions never end and each answer just spawns more questions… more hydra heads. He drank some of the remaining water from his waterskin and sat on the closest wall, overheated and tired from the awkward position he’d been in at the top of the mound.
Improved body or not, digging is hard work. He’d absolutely been able to tell the difference, though. Even the workhorse Touwon was slowing now. Oskar had lasted almost as long as the hearty little Kobold, and Touwon had been using a shovel the whole time. Touwon eventually slid down the mound to rest, and Oskar stood to take his place before Erik could attempt to climb back up with his one hand.
Erik was doing… better. The comradery, downtime, Bastet’s presence, along with a decent night’s sleep had worked wonders.
But it hadn’t worked miracles. Don’t get me wrong, the eye and tongue were incredible gifts, but those won’t matter if we don’t figure out why his own abilities are killing him. I won’t lose my brother again.
So, Oskar dug and let his frustrated brother rest. Time passed slowly and it felt like too little progress was being made. Penny had initially helped them dig, but she was much better at traveling through the sand than displacing it. She had quickly gotten bored and hungry and was now somewhere topside, giving Oskar a better sense of what was above them. The Pangolor using her magic to get out of the cave gave him an idea.
Oskar paused, considering. He wasn’t used to it yet, but he had power. More than ever, now. Being stuck underground was going to make using that power more annoying than usual, but he should be able to exert his power anyhow. Not just over wind, but over the air itself. It would have been a bit much before, but his magic control and strength felt way stronger than it had. Apparently, his lagging growth in Spirit had acted as a bottleneck, and his overall increase in body stats helped him to be better able to handle his growing mastery over the natural magics of this world.
“Fox, please back up. I think we’ve cleared enough out that I can push out enough sand to get us through.”
“Why not pull? We’ve been digging the whole time?” Erik asked.
“I thought about that,” Oskar replied. “I can’t get a super clear picture of what’s up there. Maybe if I could actually see through Penny’s eyes, but I can’t. She gives me a better idea what’s up there than where it is, exactly. And, if it’s near a dune wall, it could come avalanching in all at once, pouring in and potentially crushing us.”
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Erik grunted in acknowledgement.
“If I use Sora to push, I’ll hopefully clear out any big ass piles of sand that want to come in here and crush us. Although,” Oskar stopped, pursing his lips in deep thought for a moment. “That could cause a sand slide, too. But I think the chances are better if I push. I can feel the air stirring above. My money’s on it being mostly clear. Still, no point in risking an avalanche of sand if I pull too hard,” Oskar said.
This time, when Oskar called on Sora, he felt a small chill in the air sweep in behind him, sending shivers down his whole body due to the sweat. He could tell the cost of using Sora like this was much higher.
Is this the Cryon sub-concept thing? Why does it take so much Capacity?
// Probably a few reasons, if I had to guess. First: it’s more than Sora, now, isn’t it? It makes sense it would be more demanding. Second: You know how much easier this kind of stuff gets with practice. I’m sure it’ll get more efficient as you master it further. Fourth: It’s broiling in here. It probably takes more magic to introduce an opposing element in this type of environment. //
Wait, what was third?
// You must have missed it, try to keep up. //
Oskar’s reply faded from his thoughts as the faintest scent of pine and life swept past him. The scent was like smelling a La Croix compared to Bastet’s though; the scent of her magic was like walking through a forest just before a spring rain.
Regardless, for just a moment, he felt peace like when Bastet had used the magic he now carried somewhere inside himself. Just… dialed down to a whisper.
To him, though, the magic spooled up around him with a force he’d never imagined possible. He could feel traces of multiple unfamiliar power inside the magic as it encircled him and knew it for what it was.
The promise of more. There’s so much more to Sora than I knew. I still don’t know, but now at least, I know I don’t know, you know.
// Son of a birch stole my line. //
He’d been using mostly wind and water, but everything that existed in the sky existed in Sora.
Intoxicated, he pulled harder on the magic, and as it spun faster around him, Oskar suddenly felt those unblinking, countless eyes watching him from impossibly far away.
Far away- both in distance and time, he knew, and he felt the terrifying feeling of those shuttering, horrifying things in the sky go perfectly still. He could feel their power, for lack of a better term, “leaking through the gaps” in his mind. He stopped reaching for more, and the feeling subsided.
Not since he’d first arrived on this planet, desperate and close to breaking apart from the ordeal of nightmares and his brother’s torture, had he felt their attention so keenly.
I don’t know what that was… but that was terrifying.
They suddenly felt less like the horrific figments of his imagination he’d tried to tell himself they were, and more like horrifying things of impossible scale who were waiting to eat this planet when it finally died, as crazy as that seemed. Blinking, he cleared his head and focused.
Oskar gave it everything he had, quickly expending the Sora and swearing he’d never pull so greedily again if he could help it. With a blast of cold air that grew in strength as it swept through the cavern, the power stormed forward from above and on all sides. The change in pressure and the vacuum of Sora affected the air and sand above the cavern roof, and the sand all around them swirled in minuscule spirals before blasting outward.
The chill and pleasant scent disappeared as the cavern suddenly brightened. Oskar’s ears popped, and he saw everyone grimace as the same happened to them. The big calico shook her head and then glared at Oskar for a moment before squinting up at the opening.
Dangerous, razor thin beams of light crisscrossed the room around Oskar from the jagged portion of the glass roof.
One beam of light, as thin as fishing wire and magnified, hit Oskar’s upraised palm as he lowered it back to his side. Erik, in an appreciative show of reaction time, snapped a shield around Oskar before he even had time to pull his hand away from the painful laser-like beam. His brother’s hand steady him and stopped him from taking a step backwards away from the lights in front of him.
Looking back, he realized Erik had saved him from even more damage. Had he taken that instinctual backward step, he’d have walked right into two more beams of light that crossed behind him.
He looked over at Erik, wide eyed, and with a tired grin, Erik mouthed “Dumbass,” to him.
Oskar flipped him a bird and carefully moved up towards the entrance and then held out a hand to help Erik walk up the mound and carefully out of the cave.