PSTH: Chapter Fifty-Six

Just as a reminder, there will be no chapters next week, since I'm not writing this week in order to spend time with family and friends.

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Pair bonds, gemini links, dual cultivation, and more. There are many names for the attempts to use Bond Primal on a person, and use it to share power between large groups. Despite the fact that establishing a bond between a human and an essence beast is possible, and even human-to-human bonds are possible, a spell with the capacity to pool anima and pneuma for singular, massively empowered champions is yet to be discovered. The bonds instead allow some simple psychic linking, as seen with a tamer and their Primals, as well as improve essence accumulation while cultivating together. Not nothing, but not the boost that has been sought after…

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Student study video on essence and biology, circa 409 Modern-Era

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A hush fell over the crowd as the commentator – announcer? Analyst? I wasn’t sure her official job title – took the air over the field, preparing to begin her introduction. As she floated, her air elemental magic swept through the arena, and I heard the testing phrases rustle by like the leaves in autumn. I had to admit, it was pretty cool to feel the wind in person, and to be able to look down on the stage directly, instead of just watching the recordings.

The arena below had completely been cleared out, and a double size ring had been erected, the enchantments creating a very faint ripple in the air, like the shimmering of a heat haze. Gawain had been quick to inform me, as well as everyone else, that double size rings weren’t actually double the size. Their radius had been doubled, which meant the ground surface area was four times larger, and the volume was eight times larger. Double just sounded better. 

“Ladies, gentleman, and our other distinguished guests, introducing Oceanseed’s newest Regent, the youngest regent to hold the position in history at the age of twenty-nine, the common-type tamer: Finley Spinner!” 

At her proclamation, spinning circles of white light appeared on one side of the ring as Finley was teleported in, and I leaned in to watch, before letting my eyes flick to the radiant magic illusion displaying the close up. My eyesight was pretty good, but even I had trouble making out much about Finley from up in the stands, other than that they were tall, with black hair and dark skin. The details in the illusion made their age much more apparent, and I had to marvel at how they’d managed to get the position while not even being a decade older than I was. They had a sharp, angular face, with high cheekbones, and they were dressed with a sort of casual irreverence, the sleeves cut off their t-shirt to display their arms, ripped jeans, and thick rubber boots. On their shoulder was Bagel Thief, the famously infamous Kirow they’d reached their station with. 

“And of course, Galena Town’s very own Councillor, another relatively new member of the position, who is just entering his fifth year here, we have Samuel Kingfisher!” 

The teleportation magic around Sam was green instead of white, which suggested that they actually had two teleporters. Not entirely relevant to the fight, but I found it pretty interesting myself. From afar, I could only see Sam as a fairly average looking guy in his mid-thirties, with semi-tanned skin and hair that had gone prematurely gray. Unlike Finley, he was dressed as I expected a Councillor to dress: nice clothes that were a bit above average, but nothing like the tight-fitting black suits that the Obsidian Kings had favored.

The announcer floated down, holding her hand out, as if she was holding an imaginary microphone towards Councillor Kingfisher. 

“Sam – can I call you Sam? – Sam. What inspired you to make this match public? And do you have any words for the people watching?” 

“Well Sofia, it’s really not much of a story. Finley was just drifting through, and realized they never actually got my seal, but that’s more their story to tell. I was happy to host the fight, and we agreed to make it public, and to bring some more eyes to the city of art! As for the people watching at home, I just want them to remember that they can achieve their dreams. Galena town, where we are now, and where I was born and raised, has an average ambient essence level of two. I was told that there was no way to make Galena into a bastion of any sort of essence related sports. But here we are. And I’m not special. There’s no inborn talent that makes me better. No. I got a bit lucky, and put in tens of thousands of hours of work. That’s not to say limits don’t exist. They do. But don’t let your limits define your goals.” 

Sam gave a bow at that, and the announcer took a moment of silence before drifting over to the Regent. 

“Wise words! And Regent Finley, how about you?” 

They mimed taking her microphone, and began to speak, Bagel Thief squawking twice and interrupting before they could actually get going. 

“Well, like Sam said, ain’t much of a story to tell. His predecessor was the first seal I collected, seven years ago, which means I never got his. I happened to be passing by, and decided why not? As for people talking at home, I’m no good with fancy words or speeches. But I’ll just say this. I only became a tamer cuz my ma and me were some of the people who slipped through the cracks, and I wanted to make my life better. But I became a Regent to try and make sure other kids like me don’t get f– ignored. There’s some truth to what Sam says. But if you wanna make a real change, make it one that the next generation will feel. Let them sit under the shade of oak trees you can’t and sh– stuff like that.” 

There was a bit of muffled laughter as they tried to contain themselves, before the announcer pretended to take back the microphone and floated into the air. The rippling of the protective dome intensified to nearly opaque levels for several seconds before returning to full transparency, and the announcer threw up three fingers. 

“Well said! And now… three!” she called, then put one finger down. “Two! One! Summon!” 

Bagel Thief leapt from Regent Finley’s shoulder and transformed into its battle form with a flash of light. Its feathers grew sharper, wings extended, beak longer, and talons glistened, while its level sixty-something magic radiated out. The Kirow was joined by a Litooth, yet another common Primal. It was an earth elemental that seemed to resemble a horned rabbit, like the mythical jackalope, and its battle form grew the horns out to wicked looking spikes, while its legs thickened and it prepared for battle. It was only in the high level fifties, which surprised me initially. I supposed that if they really did spend a lot of time with their primals improving the ousia weave, and with them being so new to the title of Regent, it might make sense for them to be lower level than I’d expect from someone like Vince, with his near level hundreds. 

Out of sheer curiosity, I opened my ousia sight and examined both Bagel Thief and the Litooth. Bagel Thief's ousia was an absolute work of art, with the strings of essence creating larger pools of anima and pneuma that were also denser and recovered quicker. They seemed to have completely re-tooled large sections in the wings, improving flight speed drastically. The Litooth, on the other hand, was like looking at a master sculptor halfway through a project. It was clear that it was going to become something great, and the rough outline was certainly there, especially around the pools of power, but it also clearly was incomplete. Some strings effectively went nowhere at all, while others seemed to be attached to other strings without power flowing through them, like adding a second bucket to try and fetch more water from a dry well. It was still a massive improvement from the overly simplistic common weave, though. I was 

I caught a glance of Finley and blanched. I knew that there wasn’t anything above legendary, not in the sense of actual rarity. There were discussions about it, of course. What does one call a hypothetical three-form legendary who has used a mystic jewel to undergo a fundamental improvement? Mythic? Pseudo-mythic? It was one of the questions that had no real practical reason for being asked, as even the spiderweb principle started hitting diminishing returns eventually, but the sort that was in human nature to ask. If people heard about there being five levels, they’d ask about how to reach level six. I couldn’t even count the number of people who’d done research to try and figure out how to add more layers to a hundred-layer core. 

But I thought that if anyone I ever met was going to be reasonably called a mythic rarity level ousia weave, it would be Finley. They’d completely remapped their entire ousia weave to a degree that made River’s remapping look like the botched attempts of a neophyte. They didn’t have a core for me to count layers on, so their pneuma and anima were more… spinney… as they moved through the fluid, raw essence of the spirit, but it was clear that they’d done a truly absurd amount of work on improving the raw potency of both. The only time I’d felt something on this level was when Vince had unveiled his power against the Obsidian King’s Ghost. Vince definitely surpassed Finley in raw essence quantity, and probably also in recovery rates, but I wasn’t sure that even Vince had anima quite as frighteningly intense as Finley’s. 

I barely had time to take it all in before I was forced to switch my attention away from Finley and their Primals and to Councillor Kingfisher. The Primals he sent out were exciting in their own way, entirely different from the finely designed ousia weaves of Finley’s team. His was stacked in a more traditional sense of both natural rarity and level. At least mostly. He’d done a bit of work on his own ousia weave, taking it to a level that I thought might be roughly rare, but compared to Finley, that felt remarkably unimpressive. His Primals, on the other hand, did not disappoint. 

The first Primal that materialized was a Starab, an earth and radiant element Primal of epic rarity. Its battle form resembled a scarab beetle made of glistening gemstones that ran the full spectrum of the rainbow and beyond, with clear quartz or diamond-like wings. Within each of the pneuma-forged gemstones was a glowing star of light that connected to the others, turning the entire Primal into a glistening cluster of starlight. The exceptionally unusual Primals were prized for their beauty by collectors who liked to build habitats, but any of them that were interested in combat were almost immediately snapped up by tamers, since their power was just as impressive. Their gift made each of the gemstones that made up their body have its own sub-pool of anima, effectively doubling their spellpower when put together. 

The second primal he called up resembled no animal, but rather, looked like a vaguely bipedal spirit made of shadow and flames. Darkwisps somewhat resembled the mythical will of the wisps, and could even be found in swamps, with a tendency to devour any essence-filled objects that they came across. Despite technically being rare Primals, they were seen less frequently than most other rare Primals, thanks to the fact that deep in the swamp is fairly treacherous terrain – even compared to the oyster fields of my home. Their gift was a weird one, allowing them to infuse their dualistic shade and fire anima into any spell to imbue it with both shadow and flame. Somewhere deep within, born from the edgy teenage self that had never fully vanished, there was a part of me that really wished I could have a darkwisp, even if it would synergize terribly with my team. 

“Begin!” the announcer shouted, the Regent and Councillor thrust their hands out, and the Primals sprang into action.