PSTH: Chapter Fifty-One

A common misunderstanding is that any additional layers in a core or amount of ousia will extend a person’s lifespan. But while there is a shard of truth to that, the amount of time granted is minimal. When a magian lives to a hundred and fifty, it is a function of their spellcraft improving their biology and the increased resilience of their ousia threads, not a matter of ousia quantity. When the Obsidian Kings ate the ousia of their followers to prolong their lifespan, they were unknowingly reinforcing their ousia beyond ordinary limits for biological beings. That’s the true nature of why their bodies die – the ousia was too resilient to remain bound to the body, giving rise to a corpse and a ghost…

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The Essence of Animation, a book published by a biologist in an attempt to categorize every type of essence-based creature, published 439 Modern-Era

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When I finally woke up the following day, I grumbled for a solid thirty seconds about how Laurel and River had destroyed my normal sleep cycle. Most of the time, my dreams were swirls of colors and nonsensical scenarios that didn’t click together into neat story-like arcs, and I blamed their teasing for this unusual night of sleep. I wished that I could just forget it, but the memories of the dreams stuck around an annoyingly long time. 

Thankfully, I had things to do that could take my brain off of them, at least for a little while. After eating a quick breakfast of some eggs that had been mixed with more of the strange ramp plant, ordinary onions, chicken, and enough hot sauce to make me cough and my eyes water, I headed out to the local Tamer’s Consortium, which was located on the middle ring of the city. 

Signing up for a timeslot to face off against Councillor Kingfisher was easy, in the sense that the paperwork wasn’t any more complex. It was, however, going to be some time after the concert, so about two weeks from today. 

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” the secretary who was handling the paperwork with me said, cheer filling his voice. “Due to the duel with Regent Finley, Sam intentionally staggered the challenges for this season to something that would suit the influx of people to the city.” 

He passed me a strange box, covered in symbols that looked vaguely familiar, but that were entirely nonsensical to me. It was like looking at a box covered in letters that never came together to form actual words. A moment later, I understood: the box’s surface could move, everything on it being made of strangely connected tiles. Shifting one also shifted almost all of the other tiles. It was a strange puzzle box, definitely not the kind of design I’d seen before, but it definitely was still a puzzle. 

“In there is a piece of paper, containing critical information on how to complete the challenge and actually face off against Sam. If you fail to complete it before your allotted time slot, just come back in; we’ll give you a second hint and sign you up for another time slot. Things should mostly have calmed down by then, so I wouldn’t worry too much.” 

“A second hint?” I asked. “So there is an initial hint I get to start with?”

“Keen eye! Or ear, I suppose, but anyways, yes you do,” he said, before taking a deep breath and raising his eyebrows. “Here it is: Since you’re a tamer, you already know what one of the box faces should look like when complete.” 

I squinted and tried to interpret the clue, but couldn’t think about it for long, as I had to complete all of the paperwork on the secretary’s augpad. Once I was finally done with what felt like an endless number of signatures, I stowed the cube in my bag and headed through the halls to their training facility. As expected from the upcoming fight between two of the nation’s premier trainers, the training spaces were absolutely packed. In fact, it was arguably even worse than it would be if the fight had taken place in somewhere like Tourmaline or Calcite. Even though both of those had a much higher population to drain the ambient essence, they also had an extant, and even large, population of essence hearts that increased the potency of the area, as well as the overall quantity. I’d been able to cultivate just fine while in Tourmaline, after all, but out here the essence was thin and low leveled. 

I admittedly wasn’t an expert on ambient essence distribution. I knew that the quantity in the air and the level were linked factors, but not exactly the same factor, and I wasn’t entirely sure on why. But I was knowledgeable enough to know that trying to gather power in such a weak environment was going to be absurdly slow for anyone higher than level two or three, and would only slow further with each breakpoint – level ten, twenty, thirty, so on and so forth. That meant if my Primals and I wanted to make any progress during the time we had leading up to the fight, then I’d need to find the essence a different way. 

It also meant that every tamer worth their salt who had come to town for the event was going to have nearly exactly the same thought. 

I spent a good long while walking through the training facilities, trying to find anything that was open, and hopping in to take an area as soon as it was free. I actually got to try out a couple of machines that way, including an area rather like an archery range that had a half-dozen moving plates of different colors instead of a target. While Zale and Scales weren’t able to get much use out of it, Hex was able to train Poison Needle in the range. With it still being a relatively new spell for her, she needed the help on her accuracy. We spent a while working together with her shooting at targets as I called out random colors and they shifted around in circling patterns. It wasn’t a replacement for a true battle, but Hex and I felt like she’d managed to stretch her spell out well and improve her overall ability to aim with it. 

Scales got a benefit out of an area that seemed to just be a bunch of punching bags that were low to the ground. There was some truth to that, but the bags had been enchanted to help resist bite force from pneuma empowered bodies and spell strengthened strikes. That alone would have been useful, but the bags also had a retributive mode, where they would lash out with a counter-strike upon being bitten. Scales was tough and strong, but his speed and magic were somewhat lacking. The magic was a simple fact, and one that I wasn’t too worried about. Speed on the other hand? While he couldn’t just miraculously create more pneuma to dedicate toward improving the speed of his battle form, he could improve the mundane reaction time, and thus squeeze more effect out of the enhancements to speed his pneuma did provide. 

Zale was able to use the arena with the retributive punching bags as well, but it wasn’t the spot that provided him the most benefit. That honor went to a small machine that looked somewhat like a treadmill. Only instead of moving a belt and running along on it, the treadmill-thing worked a form of spiritual resistance against the person on it while they connected their magic to it and tried to complete a loop of anima and pneuma. It operated somewhat similarly to his gift, and while on the treadmill, he effectively had to put up with twice the usual resistance. While that sucked and felt terrible in the moment, it made the comparative lack of resistance from exiting the machine useful, and made the effort needed while under Hex’s gift-suppressing aura an absolute breeze.  

Of course, skills were flexible things, not a static number that could be tracked on a sheet and only went up. Scales, Hex, and Zale all benefited from the various machines and training areas that the Tamer’s Consortium offered to members, sure, but it was easily the kind of thing that could atrophy if not intentionally kept up with. I couldn’t provide the equipment all of the time, but I made a mental note to visit the Tamer’s Consortium more often whenever I was in a city or town that had one. I also tried to figure out a couple of non-equipment related ways to practice the same skill, like having Hex hold a Shade Bite until Scales approached, and having him try and bite while dodging to the side. 

After our training, we all took a break to go out to one of the small town parks, eat, and relax. I hung out with River and Laurel for a bit, as we headed to a movie that was playing nearby, then pulled out the puzzle cube to play with it and figure out what its trick was.

Once we had given our essence time to relax and recover from the workout we’d put it through, new essence flowed in from… wherever the essence came from. I knew that was a matter of some debate among scholarly circles, since it wasn’t gathered from ambient essence and seemed to violate the law of conservation of energy. I personally thought the new power came from the soul or spirit or something of that sort, but that wasn’t proven and didn’t really explain it either way.

We fell into something of a routine after that, and on the third day of our training, I had an epiphany. The back of my mind finally managed to put together the clue the guy at the consortium had given me with the symbols on the box. They weren’t just random shapes – they were chunks of a spell. Given that I was a tamer, there could only be one real option for which spell that I needed to complete in order to solve it: Bond Primal. It still took me a while of playing with the mechanics to get it to slot into the shape of Bond Primal, but once I’d managed it, two of the six cube faces began to glow. A trickle of anima ran through them, and they clicked into place, a textbook example of Bond Primal and… something else. 

I actually got River’s help identifying the new spell. It was a spell I knew almost as intimately as Bond Primal, even if I knew its form far less: Pneuma Bite. The simple spell to empower your pneuma for a single strike. Most effective while channeled through the mouth or horns, but capable of being channeled through paws or claws, much like how Hex often used her claws for Shade Bite.

“Can I actually cast it?” I asked, more curious than anything. River glanced up from some software on his augpad and nodded. 

“It’s rare to see any magians with a null-element core, but you didn’t solidify your raw essence, meaning you can only cast null spells, and even those cost more than they would for Zale, who is actually null-element. Buttttttttttt. Yes. It’s a null spell, just like Bond Primal, so you can cast it.” 

The next day while I was at the training facility I decided to try it out of sheer curiosity. I spent a while sketching the spell out, flared my pneuma through my body, and then punched a target – not one of the retributive ones. It pulsed as its enchantment absorbed the effect, and I shook my hand out. Definitely not as powerful as Zale, or even as strong as Scales was with Pneuma Bite, but it had hurt my knuckles, and wasn’t something I wanted to get hit by. As I was shaking my hand out, I had an idea. Given that both of the spells on the box thus far had been null element, it seemed weird for them to suddenly change. I spent a while searching up assorted null spells, and shifting the remaining faces on the box to see if I could get them to slot into place. Eventually, I managed it with the Basic Dash spell, locking two more sections of the box, before finishing with Boost Skin – a worse version of Boost Scales, but a version that could be applied to creatures without scales.

In total, it meant that the box had six spells on it, one for each face: Bond Primal, Pneuma Bite, Basic Dash, Boost Skin, Pneuma Punch, and Empower Blows. I tried all of them out, naturally. Pneuma Punch was essentially just a variation of Pneuma Bite better for punching with, and given the similarities of the spells structures, probably what had been intended to be the next part of the box opened, using the bite as a hint, though I’d found my own way to do it. Boost Skin and Empower Blows were… fine. I wasn’t really planning to throw down in the middle of a match, so the anima needed to apply the boosting spells was better spent on fueling my Primals than myself. 

At least the Basic Dash was fun to try out. It had nowhere near the absurd speed of a Light Dash, nor the striking power and speed of Lightning Dash, but I still felt like I was zipping around when I cast it. I could only cast it a few times, though, as it drained my reserves quickly. 

Once I had cast all of the spells on the box, the glow of the spells returned, and it unfolded to reveal a piece of paper inside.