(Year 997 of the Organized Calendar, 16th Day of Inji's Fullness, 10:14AM)

"...are you sure about this?"

From behind me, in the low voice of my shimmering new friend, came a murmur: "The question is whether you are sure, Aedan."

That was true, but it still bothered me to hear. "W-b- but I don't want to-"

Again, she murmured, "You should be quiet, lest you scare away your prey. Ask yourself what your desire more: To be kind to a beast, or to be well-fed?"

I almost took a moment to think about it, but instead a thought struck me: If I didn't want this, would she even be asking?

I opened my eyes. The deer was still in front of me, not far inside the treeline, nibbling on some sort of plant. Careful not to brush my hand too quickly against the leaves around me, I raised my arm and hand toward the deer, palm facing out.

The deer seemed to freeze for a moment. I'd been quiet and careful... but it was like the animal could tell what was coming.

My stone still hit it squarely where its skull met its neck, though, so if it knew what I was about to do, it must not have been all that bothered by what was coming. The deer fell over in a heap, blood beginning to trickle out of the open wound, as suddenly and easily as if it had never been alive at all.

"Well done, Aedan." It was hard to say that her voice was warm, but the shimmering girl did seem proud of me, genuinely.

I closed my eyes. "Sure, if you say so. Let's... just get this over with."

I waited a minute, to see if anything else in the woods would suddenly start causing problems now that this one deer was dead. The minute passed uneventfully, so I carefully crawled out of the bush I'd been hiding in and approached the deer carcass. I knelt down next to the animal, and even though we were at a risk of being interrupted and surprised, I felt a need to stroke its neck, as if it could still feel my touch. It wasn't the largest deer I'd seen, but it seemed healthy, young, and strong.

Of course, if I was going to survive on my own after what had happened at home, I would need to be all of those things too, but...

Did I want that, if this was how I got it?

I looked up, and saw the shimmering girl hovering in front of me. She didn't say anything this time, she just... hovered.

I looked down at the deer in front of me. The deer was already dead, so even if I decided I didn't want this... what would be the point in stopping now?

I tightened my grip on the deer's neck, and my will to [Devour] did the rest, sucking the entire carcass inside my body with a ripple and a blur... or maybe, I wondered, the things I Devoured were sent somewhere else through my body?

No, that wasn't right. Even if the things I Devoured were sent Somewhere Else, that somewhere still had to be a part of me, somehow... because I could feel them. I felt full now, in a way, having Devoured a whole deer... but a part of me did still feel empty, like I could hold more if I wanted to.

Waving my hand to check my Status confirmed this:

Aedan Omarsson

Peasant

Age: 15

Good: 0

Physique: 0 (0/0)

Evil: 0

Dexterity: 1 (0/1)

Order: 0

Mind: 3 (2/1)

Chaos: 0

Soul: 0 (0/0)

Creation: 0

Fortune: 0 (0/0)

Consumption: 2

Substance Consumed

Energy Consumed

Earth: 2.3/10

Heat: 14/15

Light: 14/15

Life Consumed

Essence Consumed

Plant: 0.2/10

Beast Soul: 2/10

Hair: 10/20

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Human Soul: 1/10

Flesh: 25/50

Muscle: 23/45

Blood: 50/75

Bone: 12/35

Advancements: [0]

Looking over my Status, I noticed that the limits of how much I could Devour had increased again. The first time that had happened, with the rabbit, there had been a warning about it... wherever these warnings came from, whatever aspect of the Path made them happen, apparently it didn't think I needed another.

That explained the feeling of emptiness, apparently...

Thinking about what I'd Devoured brought my attention back up to my shimmering friend, still hovering in front of me. "Alright, it's done. We have our deer. You said we need this, but... why? It's food, I guess, but... I don't know how to cook this."

The hazy girl didn't pull any punches with her answer. "If you are to survive on your own, without home or hearth to return to... you will need to learn."

I closed my eyes, and she continued, "The Path will make it easier. I will teach you."

I opened my eyes, and found myself looking down at my hands. There was a tiny patch of red on one of my fingers, where it must've brushed against the deer's bloody wound.

So far, the Path of Consumption had been the cause of all of my problems, at least during the last few days. All of the bad things that had happened to me had happened because I'd used the Path stupidly, recklessly, and hidden it for too long.

Now, though, I'd been kicked out of town, my Dad probably hated me, Miss Ambrose was dead, and I had no house, no food, no tools, no skills, and no plan.

I felt my hand tighten into a fist.

I had nothing to rely on for help except Consumption now... That, and my shimmering new friend.

I looked back up at the hazy girl. "Alright... lead the way."

Her advice, at least at the start, was not much better than I could've come up with. While she floated ahead and around, keeping watch for any hunting animals that might be nearby, I slowly skirted the edge of the forest, gathering whatever fallen branches and loose shrubbery I could, using [Devour] to store them for later when my hands got too full. When it added up to a bit more than 30 "Plant" consumed, the way my Status counted it, the shimmering girl told me enough was enough, and together we made our way further into the woods, into a clearing we'd found while hunting the deer.

There, since I knew by this point we were gathering firewood, I knew what to do next without being told: Using [Devour] to make it easier, I stuck my hand into the dirt and grass and rubbed it around a bit, absorbing everything I touched, until I'd made a little pit in the ground. I'd seen Dad do this plenty of times before with a shovel, so really... I was just copying what he'd done, but faster.

Once the pit seemed big enough, I used [Expel] to pop out a small pile of fallen branches into the pit, and then a cover of leaves and shrubbery on top of them. Dad had explained this to me, too - the leaves and shrubs were easy to light on fire, and once they were, the fire would spread from them to the wood.

That made me think of a problem, though, and I turned to my shimmering new friend. "I guess I know what we're doing, but we're about to have an issue: I don't know how to light a fire. Dad tried to show me once or twice, but..."

My voice trailed off. I didn't want to say out loud that I hadn't been able to get the hang of it.

The shimmering girl seemed to understand, and she turned away from me to look at the leaves. After a moment, she said, "Strictly speaking, what we are about to do is the domain of Creation, but rules the Paths create for themselves are... flexible, flimsy at times, in the way they interact with the laws of the world."

I nodded, slowly, not exactly sure what she was saying. "So, you know how I can start a fire, but it'll be... cheating? Sort of?"

The shimmering girl nodded. "In a way, yes. If that bothers you, we will not be cheating anyone or anything that has the ability to be bothered in turn."

I raised my hands. "Alright, hey, I'm not complaining, just... what are we actually doing?"

My shimmering companion tilted her head. "The theory is simple: In its essence, fire is nothing but heat and light. You have already consumed these things from a fire, using the power to [Devour], so if you [Expel] these things simultaneously-"

That was where I stopped her. "Hang on. I can [Expel] more than one thing at a time?"

After a moment, the shimmering girl nodded. "You may find that it requires more focus of you, but nothing forbids you from doing so. Go on, try it."

So I did. The first thing I tried, the most obvious thing, was just to imagine a fireball in the palm of my hand, the way a wizard would conjure one up in a storybook.

That didn't work.

I tried to think back... when I'd used [Expel] to shoot pebbles or unload a pile of branches, I hadn't had to imagine anything, I'd just done it. Why I couldn't do that for fire, I couldn't think...

Until I thought back to my Status, that was. "Heat" and "Light" were listed as two separate things, and the shimmering girl had said I would need to combine the two in order to make fire, and it would need more focus...

Because, I realized, I would need to split my focus. Trying to conjure fire one-handed was the wrong approach. Instead, I held both of my hands out in front of me and cupped them together, willing myself to [Expel] heat from one hand and light from the other.

For a moment, that was all that happened. One hand began to glow (with that odd double-vision again, and the sensation that the light was coming out from an impossible gap in my palm); Nothing came out from my other palm, but I could feel it turn warm.

Then... there was a spark, in between my palms. I cupped them closer together, tighter, and then -

A fireball blossomed, hovering gently between my palms, almost exactly like I'd imagined it. Not wanting to waste any time (or any of the Heat and Light I'd Consumed), I crouched down next to the fire pit, gently reaching my hands toward it, and touched the flickering flame against the tinder I'd laid down. Leaves and stems began to catch fire, and when I willed myself to [Expel] no more heat or light, the shrubs continued to burn.

I'd done it.

That milestone met, I just took a seat next to the fire, pit, watching it spread. It was still only midday, so the sky was fully light, but there was still something calming about being at a fireside. The shimmering girl hovered into view, and although I'd only seen her hover while standing before, she lowered herself into... a weird crouch, maybe something meditative.

She touched down on the ground, or very close to it, and turned to me. "You will want to stick your hand into the fire before long, Aedan."

I looked at the hazy figure and raised an eyebrow, and she explained, "You have lost much of the Heat and Light you absorbed last night. If you want to do this again, you will need to recapture those resources, and more, to use next time."

That made sense. I rolled up my shirtssleeves and shifted my position again, scooching backward and turning over to lie on my front, so I could reach the fire more easily. I raised my hands like I was warming them over the fire, and when I felt that filling sensation as I began to [Devour] the flame, I stuck my hands right in. I had an idea that I might pull in too much of the fire, so much that it couldn't keep itself going, but that didn't seem to happen.

And so we just... sat there, the fire growing just slightly while I sucked up most of it, watching it burn.

After that went on for a while, my hazy new friend spoke up. "This is Consumption, in its own way. By consuming the wood, the fire transforms its substance into more fire. The potential for this transformation always existed within the wood... but you, by setting it aflame, were the one to release that potential."

I stared into the fire, which was starting to rise enough that I could feel its heat, despite sucking most of the heat in. "I never thought about it that way before."

The shimmering girl -

That thought stopped midway. "Hey. Can I ask you something?"

She'd been about to say something, I thought, but I'd interrupted her. After a moment, she answered, "You may."

I didn't want to tell her that it was getting annoying to just think of her as 'the shimmering girl', so I just asked, "...do you have a name? Something I can call you?"

She tilted her head to the side. "...no. I do not. I am a being of the Path; to be named and individual is... not within my design."

I looked up at her out of the corner of my eye and she asked, "Do you want me to have a name?"

I did, yes, but something made me want to ask, "Do you want a name?"

We stared at each other for a moment, and then the girl nodded. "Yes... Yes, I do. I want you to name me. What is your desire?"

I hadn't actually thought about it, but after staring at her for another moment, I just kind of blurted out, "Shimmer."

The shimmering girl looked down at me with what felt like disdain. "...Shimmer."

I nodded. "...because you shimmer?" She didn't respond, so I added, "You look... hazy, like you're kind of here but also kind of not."

After a moment, she seemed to nod. "Shimmer... I like this name. It is, for the moment, what you desire. It shall be so."

I wasn't sure about to think about that 'for the moment', so I just nodded back. "Alright... Shimmer."

We sat in silence for another minute, and then Shimmer spoke up. "You have forgotten the task at hand, Aedan."

I looked back up at her. "Well, what am I forgetting?"

I honestly wasn't sure until Shimmer reminded me, "Preparing a fire was only a precursor to the real matter at hand: The matter of sustenance. If you are to survive, you must learn to prepare food."