PSTH: Chapter Sixty-Five

Perhaps one of the largest effects of magic on the world was the battery. Where pre-magical batteries required rare metals dredged up from the earth via damaging processes, the magical battery can be produced with simple quartz, which is abundant. With that in mind, let us not be too judgemental of the pre-magical cultures. While they have many faults, many of the solutions they had were filled with flaws as well. Of course, the reluctance to adopt a solution because it has flaws does not excuse not adopting small steps forward – the world is not black and white, and even today, not every solution is perfect…

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History lecture at Slate University, 415 Modern-Era

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“A well fought victory, snatched right from the claws of defeat!” the announcer cried. “A staggering last second transformation…” 

I sagged and let out a breath of relief, even as waves of essence sunk into Scales, Hex, Zale, and me. Scales compressed a layer on his core, and then to my second, formed a second layer a short few moments later, gaining two levels in the space of moments. That put him at level twenty now, and on-par with Primals like Zaza and Gryphon. 

Hex received a similar treatment, the essence surge forming a nineteenth layer and almost filling out another on top of that one. She was only a hair shy, and I was sure that even in this low essence environment, a couple of hours of cultivation would be enough for her to complete her core’s twentieth level. 

Zale, meanwhile, was already across the level twenty barrier, but even so, the surge was enough to let him complete his twenty-first layer. He was only one level ahead of the rest of the group now, and probably wouldn’t maintain that lead for much longer. His core touched on a new portion of his ousia weave with the level, and the spell pattern for the normal Dash spell flowed into him. I paused, debating for a second, before letting it pass. First of all, it was a spell I could cast, meaning that if I wanted to help him learn it later, I could. Second, while it did actually deal damage to anything you crashed into, far more than light dash, it had much worse mobility. I could replace Cleanse Boost, but boosts were increasingly common at higher levels, so I didn't want to commit, and everything else was just too useful. 

I didn’t have a core that I could compress layers on, since I needed to keep my essence compatible with everything, but plenty of the essence still flowed into me and filled my body and spirit with raw, uncompressed power. My anima and pneuma grew with the surge, before it finally settled down, and I let out a breath. 

“Well, I can’t say that I expected that, but well done,” Councillor Kingfisher said. “That said, do you want a bit of advice?” 

“Of course,” I agreed, taking out a cloth and starting to wipe down Scales. 

“Find a fourth Primal. Each Primal you bond with expands your pool of options. Sure, the same is true for your opponent, but that doesn’t make it a net zero. Having more options at your disposal is worth it. Plus, the same advice I gave to Laurel mostly applies to you as well,” the Councillor said. “You pulled out a win today thanks to knowing my team, planning for it, and getting lucky. If you and I went again right now…” 

“You’d probably win,” I admitted, though somewhat grudgingly. 

“I think so too. Glad to see that you can see it,” Councillor Kingfisher said, before smiling, walking over, and holding out a hand for a handshake. “But you’ve got some good skills. You can make up for levels and moves with time. Where are you going next?”

I shook his hand, and felt a smooth stone pressed into me as I did – the essence stone I’d won, presumably. I slipped it into my pocket, then turned to Rane, Laurel, and River, before glancing back at Councillor Kingfisher. 

“I think I’m going to head home, at least after Laurel wins your seal. There was an essence heart unearthed on an island near my home village, so I’d like to spend a little bit of time helping out there, training, and getting some levels. Gawain is going off to do… whatever he does… and some of that will doubtless involve training.” 

“Spending time cultivating and training is a good idea,” the Councillor said with a nod. “You won’t win your fourth Councillor Seal unless you do. You knew all possible iterations of my team with time to plan against them, and still struggled.” 

“What level would you recommend?” I asked. 

“Somewhere in the high twenties or early thirties? If you can get there, and you can keep growing from fighting and training, then you should have better spells and deeper reserves. Thirty to sixty is the most common level range for tournaments, after all, with the average around forty-five.” 

“When you say average, do you mean mean, median, or mode?” River called out from where he sat in the stands, then dodged as Laurel threw a halfhearted punch at his bicep, eliciting a chuckle from the Councillor. 

We spent a little while longer talking with the Councillor, before I hopped off the stage and headed over to my friends. Laurel scrunched her nose up at me as I approached, and I shook my head. 

“Lucky,” she said. She sounded mostly playful, but I thought I detected a note of genuine annoyance hidden beneath. I put my hand over my own heart, then nodded. 

“Essence hearts know that I was. It wasn’t just luck, but I did get lucky.” 

That seemed to mollify her for a moment, but then Rane tackled me, twisting and showing me the screen of her camera. She flicked through a couple of shots, and then shoved the camera into my face. 

“Look at this!”

“Hold on, hold on,” I said, pushing the camera back some. “If you stick it in my eyes, I’m not going to be able to see anything.” 

I studied the shot she’d focused on, and felt my eyebrows creep up my face. It was a picture from the latter half of the match, with Scales standing alone against the Fearfeaster and Insubsturgeon. Behind the Primals, Councillor Kingfisher was visible, his essence gathered around his hands and streaming up into the sky in order to empower them. I was at the far edge of the shot, and my yellow aura looked almost golden within the camera as it streamed into the lone Scales, who was absolutely glowing. 

There was a lot of artifacting on the image around him – at least, I was fairly sure that the term was artifacting? All of my knowledge about cameras came from Rane. But the artifaction seemed to cause an overlap of the two stages of the battle form, with loads of thin strings of light connecting them, the ousia in the process of changing. They were warped slightly, and producing a level of glow that definitely hadn’t been there in reality. The overall impact made it look like Scales was some sort of essence ordained, chosen warrior, battling against the forces of evil. 

“That’s an amazing shot,” I said, excitement starting to build in me. “I’ll definitely want to use that for my video.” 

“Of course!” agreed Rane. “That was the entire point, wasn’t it? I’m going to download them onto my augpad and send them over to you.” 

“Thank you,” I said, before my stomach rumbled, and I let out an amused half-laugh, half-exhale. “After that, I’m hungry. What about you all?” 

Just like we had after Gawain and Laurel’s fight, we decided to treat ourselves, but instead of going to the restaurant that imported things, we went to a barbeque place that focused primarily on pork, and actually had a deal with a farm a few dozen miles outside of Galena itself. Their roast apparently took almost a complete twenty-four hours to complete, and it was well worth it, even if all the meat and fat juices did cause my stomach to get a bit upset. It was an excellent night with friends, but I found myself missing Gawain, and annoyed at myself for missing him. He didn’t need to be there, after all. 

The following morning, when I got started working on editing down the fight with the Councillor, Rane’s head peeked out from where she was on the top bunk, the long hair that dominated the non-shaved half of her head falling over the tablet. 

“Why are you using that software to do your editing? You’re going to ruin my beautiful, amazing, perfect, flawless, hundred-layer picture with that crunchy compression!” 

I paused and looked up at her, blinking, unsure how to even answer that. After a moment, I shrugged. 

“It’s the one on the Tamer Consortium’s site?” 

“Yeah, and it’s terrible. You’ve got a bit of momentum with people wanting to check you out cuz of the article, you should make the next one at least look good,” she said. “Hold on.” 

She clambered out of the top bunk a few moments later and sat down next to me, then made grabby-hands. I passed over my pad, and she started to launch

“There are several open source editors that I can recommend, some of which are free, others of which are a one time payment…”

Over the next few hours, I realized I had been something of an idiot. Rane was in school for photography, and even if photography and video editing weren’t exactly the same skills, they were very much correlated with one another. She seemed to have an endless bag of tips and tricks that improved pretty much every aspect of the process, from scene transitions to better overlay of my recording with free to use accredited music to touching up scenes and including arrows and circles to help point out specific points I was talking about. With her help, I was able to work faster and produce a higher quality video to put out in relation to the fight.

“Can I pay you to do some of this for me?” I asked, only half joking. 

“Maybe!” Rane said. “If you get a contract with the Tamer’s Consortritrum, maybe you can get them to pay me for that work.” 

“Consortium, not Consortritrum,” I said. “I don’t think Consortritrum is a word…”

“Whatever,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. 

By the time that Laurel’s rematch rolled around, I had completed what was easily the best set of short and longform videos that I’d ever produced. Linking them with Gawain and Laurel’s accounts, I noticed that it seemed to be performing at an incredible rate, probably a product of Gawain’s slowly mounting following and the article that had been published. 

Laurel’s rematch went well. She’d spent a lot of the week training, a combination of working on her own, with River, and with me. One of the things we’d done was devise strategies for each of his Primals, and with those strategies in mind, combined with a new spell imprinting disc for Sense Stone that she’d purchased at a large tamer supply store for Pop the Canistone. As we had hoped, the spell let her sense the power within the gemstone shell of the Starab, and with a good way to peirce through the illusions, Laurel pulled ahead with a hard-hitting surprise attack, then was able to use the momentum to carry her to victory.

With that victory, however, came a touch of news both good and bad. Winter break had arrived for Rane, so she and I would be taking some time to return to the village, where I could do some training. Laurel and River, however, would also be heading out to their villages and doing some training of their own. 

“I guess this is goodbye,” I said, pulling River into a hug, then giving a hug to Laurel. 

“At least for now,” agreed Laurel. “But not for long. We can take a few months to train, then when it starts to get warm, maybe February or so, we can meet up for another Councillor fight. I know that Silica City is on the sea, and has a councillor.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, smiling, before it faded. “I’ll even text Gawain about it, though he hasn’t gotten any messages.”

I gave the pair another hug, then stepped onto the train with Rane, taking a seat. As I pulled out my augpad and scrolled through my contacts, I realized that I’d mentally been planning to stay at the hostel in the village, just like anywhere else I’d been. I shook my head, pressed a call button, and pulled my headphones on. 

“Hey mom. Would you be okay with me staying at home for the winter?