“Husk? What do you mean husk?” Dolores asked Lin’Er, while Professor Atkinson tried to catch up to the fish with tentacles, but then it just turned into a light blue energy bolt and disappeared completely from their sight.

“In short, they are elementals born without a core. In your human terms, it’s like someone without a soul, or a heart. They could live, but not for very long. And even if they could survive the earlier days, they would never possess the ability to act autonomously or with reason and individual thought. It’s a worrying phenomenon that has been happening ever since ancient times.” Lin’Er sighed: “But it has been happening more and more as time went on - and sadly, there’s very little we could do to help it.”

“Do you have any clues on why it happens?” Professor Atkinson could only help but grabbed in his hand a small trace of remaining energy signatures, then he came back to Lin’Er and Dolores: “This is weird - looks like it’s body is disintegrating already?”

“That’s because of the absence of a core.” Lin’Er answered while trying to distract herself with the birthing of other potential elementals: “Without cores, elementals will never be able to maintain their bodies and grow, and eventually they will fade, like they were never there.”

“I thought there are some elementals that could live without cores?” Dolores asked: “Or did I remember wrong?”

“You’re talking about Fog Dwellers.” Lin’Er said: “Yeah, they are not elementals, they are quite different - you could read about it from the history documented in one of our temples. It’s quite a long story - we have many suspicions, I can tell you about them later.”

“Hey, there’s another one.” Professor Atkinson interrupted Lin’Er and Dolores: “I don’t know, it looks different - special.”

As Dolores and Lin’Er looked at the direction in which Professor Atkison was pointing, Professor Atkinson took out a small orb from his pocket, and started concentrating his magical power into it - this was one of the “gifts” given to him and Dolores by Xyn as a “signing bonus”, and as a tool to locate Xyn’s descendant.

The orb lit up and glowed in a dim and pale light, but soon before Professor Atkinson could look closer, it went dark again.

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“So, no indication of anything here?” Dolores noticed Professor Atlkinson’s actions, so she leaned close and asked Professor Atkinson about what he’d found.

“It’s weird - it’s not entirely like when we tried back at the academy, but it’s not showing anything obvious.” Professor Atkinson sighed and said: “Let’s just keep digging up the history first, that’ll be our best choice for now.”

“Then let’s get back to it after the birthing rituals.” Dolores sighed.

The altar at which Professor Atkinson pointed earlier started showing something that was different from the earlier birth: there was a small vortex consisting of lightning, wind and ice energy constructs on top of the altar. Small balls of bright blue lightning, crystalized shards of ice were spinning in streams of wind around the central axis, and all slowly growing stronger.

The vortex then changed in shape gradually, from that of a tornado that was wide on its top and narrow at its bottom, to that of a spindle where it was narrow on both the top and the bottom, and finally to that of a sphere. As the sphere formed completely, the different sources of energy inside of it were slowly merged together - the balls of lightning, the shards of ice and the streams of wind seemed to have merged into the same currents of energy, and these currents in turn merged into the spinning energy ball as one.

The sign was no doubt very promising, and more and more elementals gathered around the altar and watched in anticipation.

A small batch of threads grew from the bottom of the ball of energy, and dropped down like a small tail. Even though the ball of energy was spinning, the batch of threads remained stationary and steady.

Something round and spherical with visible bones underneath came out from inside of the spinning energy ball, which, like the batch of threads at the bottom, stayed stationary despite being enclosed by the spinning ball of energy.

The wall of the ball of energy became thinner and thinner, and the spherical thing with bones inside of it became larger and larger in size. Before long, the ball of energy dissipated, and what remained was only the floating ball inside with signs of supporting bones inside slightly protruding from the surface and with some kind of light at its center. The batch of threads were connected to its bottom like a tail.

“That looked like ...” Dolores narrowed her eyes.

“A Chinese lantern.” Professor Atkinson nodded: “Didn’t know that an elemental can look like that?”

“Boom!” one elemental whose body was shaped like a centaur with four arms and was made of burning rocks and red glowing tree roots stomped the ground, like it was angry at what it sensed from this newborn elemental.

Other elementals also showed their own expressions of frustration, and left the altar in droves.

“What is this… Another husk?” Dolores and Professor Atkinson slowly approached the altar, now surrounded by only one elemental, whose body was made of some kind of fog-like energy.

“Yes.” Lin’Er looked greatly shaken, and did not have the heart to follow them: “This - I don’t ...”

“You … are you going to take this?” Professor Atkinson walked to the altar and tried to held the lantern in his hand, but he decided to ask the elemental with fog body first.

“No - no - you go.” the elemental shook his head and answered with a heavy accent of unknown origin: “You study, I look. Me Fog Dweller, no need.”

“Fog Dweller?” Professor Atkinson couldn’t help but have his sight linger on this elemental for a few moments.