PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Three

Where do essence hearts come from? We don’t know for sure. They're clearly solidified essence, and made of the same stuff as an essence stone, but what does that actually tell us? Measurements of essence levels in areas that have formed an essence heart don’t decrease. In fact, they actually increase! It seems to be a violation of the conservation of energy. It also raises the question of where essence itself came from? Some point to brane cosmology, and think it has always been here, but the bulk has a singular source of essence that only recently shifted to allow large leaks of it into what we observe. But there are several issues with this idea, not the least of which is that brane cosmology and string theory interact in even more unusual ways with essence than they do without it…

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From the ‘On the Nature of Essence’ Planet-Net Site, 422 Modern-Era

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The campsite, being only a day in along a trail of a nationally protected wilderness area, was fairly well worn, with shallow, dry patches where countless backpackers had set up tents for the night, and a dug out hole in the ground, lined with stones to serve as a firepit. There was even a battered old wrought iron grate that could be put atop the firepit for the purposes of creating a burner to cook on. A stream ran nearby, not large enough to do anything more than dip toes into, but plenty large enough for water.

We spent a while setting up our tents. Gabby, Gawain, and I each had our tents, naturally, but River and Laurel shared one. So did Isabella and Alberton, who seemed to pull their tent from a bag that set off my essence sense when they opened it, but I was too busy to get a proper idea of what it was. 

Meals and supplies weren’t included in the price of the tour, which was a big part of why the tour had been so cheap, at fifty credits. But it did mean that I went through my bag to break out the food cubes that I’d bought, as well as the lightweight pan, and my water purification enchantments. Isabella and Alberton had their own supplies, and this time I was able to get a strong enough sense to note that their bag seemed to be spatially expanded. Arcane spells to warp space weren’t exactly rare – River could teleport, after all – but permanent spatial bending tended to be really expensive, as the enchantments typically required massive amounts of anima to maintain themselves, more than could be gathered from the ambient essence in most places. 

“We like to explore,” Isabella said by way of explanation. “I also used to run quite the commercial empire, back when I was only a few years older than you! I had four storefronts!”

I let out an impressed whistle at the fact that she’d done well enough to expand to the legal maximum number of stores one person could own. Apparently I wasn’t the only one impressed, however, because Gawain commented as he dug through his bag, retrieving a small pan, some water, and food cubes of his own. 

“What company did you create? My mother runs several stores herself, and is a… well, she works with a lot of other companies. She might have known you, or maybe knows who you passed the businesses on to – assuming you did.” 

“Oh, I was in the furniture business,” Isabella said, waving a hand. “Nothing too grand. What does your mother do?” 

“She runs three essence product development laboratories and an essence advancement research facility,” Gawain said, “Oceanseed has all but forced themselves into every aspect of the companies, though. You can hardly tell she runs them now.” 

His tone was bitter, and I wondered if he was actually upset at the limitations, or if he’d simply inherited the feelings of secondhand anger. On one hand, it was reasonable for business owners to get annoyed when someone else took over control of their business, but on the other, it was incredibly easy for larger businesses to take advantage of people, or to even start running the government. History was full of them: the East India Company, United Fruit Company, and heart’s truth, most of the Obsidian Kings had started off as wealthy businesspeople. I was pulled out of my retrospective by a chagrined Laurel holding a bag of food cubes in one hand and a jar of water in the other. 

“Mind if I use your pan now that I’m done? We bought cubes, but…” 

“Oh, yeah, sure, go for it,” I said, pouring some of my water in the pan before wiping it out and putting it back on the table. 

Before long, everyone had a bowl of food, and was gathered around the fire. The sun was beginning to set over the mountains, casting long, low shadows all over the place, and the flickering of the firelight caused them to shift and dance. It let out soft crackling and pops as the wood burnt, and the faint smell of smoke drifted through the air, carried on a breeze that had gone from slightly warm to downright chilly as the evening went on. 

“How many of you have heard the stories of the pallid ones?” Gabby asked, leaning back in her chair and sweeping her gaze over everyone. 

“They’re utter nonsense,” Gawain said, waving his hands. “Just like any urban legend. At most it’s a Primal or magian playing a prank.” 

“I dunno about that,” Gabby said, her smile slowly starting to creep up her face. “I’ve seen a few of them. Now mind you, they haven’t bothered me. None of them are fool enough to do so. But I have seen them. So have a few of the groups that I’ve taken out this way.” 

“Oh my,” Alberton said, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. “A ghost story, then?” 

“No, it’s not a ghost. There’s a few of them out here, supposedly, hanging on with strange, terrible ways of keeping their essence from fading, but I’ve never seen one. There are also myths of spotting people in old-timey fast fashion and disposable clothing, and I’ve seen that once or twice, but I’m not too sure what that is. The pallid folk are something… different.” 

“I’ve not heard of them,” I admitted, taking a bite of my food. “What’s the story?” 

“Oh, we’re not too sure,” Gabby admitted. “They look more or less like humans, but perhaps less, not more. They’re pale, as pale as the moon itself, with long, thin, bony fingers. Their eyes are pitch black, but covered with a milky film, and big, like they’ve spent a long time underground and never came out except on moonless nights. And well, given that they supposedly live deep in the caves under these here mountains… maybe they don’t see the sun?” 

“What are they supposed to be? Aliens?” River asked. 

“Oh, no, they’re people. Or at least, they used to be. There’s a lot of theories as to what exactly they are, but they all agree on that. Some people say that a long, long time ago, perhaps during the younger dryas impact or the meltwater pulse, humans hid deep in the caves, so far down and so deep that the pre-arrival people had no idea about them, and that they only really began to make their way back to the surface recently. Others say they’ve always made their way up, and the pre-arrival cultures were just too busy to see it. Others still say that they’re younger than that. Maybe they’re people who were living out in the hills who tried to implant essence hearts into their bodies, and became warped, just like how the world warps around a heart. Maybe they were the result of some sort of ousia warping experiment from an Obsidian King, trying to unlock immortality. Maybe they’re even the children of ghosts and humans, turned to some sort of ghoulish creature…” 

As if on cue, the wind picked up. All around us, the leaves in the trees began to rustle and hiss, while the fire danced wildly, casting shadows and light all around us. Gabby started to laugh, and the sound seemed more like the cackling of a fairytale witch than it did the laughter of a thirty year old magian. 

“What we do know is that they like to look at us, to watch us, on nights when the moon isn’t too bright, like tonight. They creep across the ground, moving with a stealth that nobody but a shade magian can match, and watch us. About two years ago, actually, I was guiding a group along this very campsite. It was a cloudy dark night, the sort that made me think it might rain. I didn’t tell them any of this. I didn’t see the point. Before we went to our tents, though, one member of the group thought that they saw something pale, moving out in the woods. I turned on my flashlight, and for a second, we all saw a flash of something pale, but then it was gone…”

Isabella laughed this time, but unlike Gabby, her laugh was slightly nervous as she put her head on Alberton’s shoulder. 

“It could have been anything,” Gabby continued. “Who knows. Plenty of things out here. But then, later that night? One of the women, I believe her name was Sophia, saw long, bony white fingers, sliding up the zipper of her tent. The fingers wrapped around the side of the tent that was now open, and a pair of dark eyes covered in cataracts stared in at her. The pallid folk let out a little bit of a hissing noise, supposedly, and this is when she managed to overcome her freeze response. She let out a horrible scream unlike anything I’d heard before or since. The thing yanked her tent shut and fled.” 

Gabby gestured to herself and let the power of her essence swell once again, the power of someone in the level fifties. 

“I was out of my tent in a flash, of course, drawing up my anima into a spell and forming a pneuma shell around myself. Under the light of the magic, I saw something rushing through the camp. It bumped against this here grate and knocked it off in its rush to leave…”

“Okay, but speaking in an objective sense, they’re almost certainly not real,” Gawain pointed out. “There would be much stronger evidence for them if they were – scat samples, hunted down animals, essence fluctuations.” 

“Maybe you’re right,” Gabby agreed. “But then again… the caves here are deep, and there’s some things in this world you just can’t explain. And something certainly knocked over that iron grate.” 

“An animal, probably. It could have been a coyote scratching at her tent, casting the shadows, and in her half-asleep state, she thought it was one of the pallid folk. Then it ran, and hit the grate as it ran. Perhaps it was an arcane element Primal or essence beast casting a fear spell.” 

“You’re absolutely no fun,” Laurel said, her glowing green eyes meeting his purple. He stared back placidly, then shrugged as if it didn’t bother him. We were quiet after that, and even though I knew Gawain was probably right that the pallid folk were just a campfire story, I couldn’t help but be on edge with the snapping of the twigs. My eyes darted around each time I thought something was moving around outside of the light of the fire. There was something primal about the feeling, in a sense very different from the Primal creatures. There was an emotion, a memory of being hunched around the light of a campfire that felt baked into the deepest recesses of my mind.

When we finally went to bed that night, I had a hard time sleeping. I spent a while tossing and turning in my bag, mentally cursing at Gabby for her story, and wishing that I had another human with me. It got so bad that Scales, sensing my distress, emerged from where he’d been resting in his storage gem to cuddle next to me. 

I was glad for it, and it felt like I’d only just drifted off to sleep when a scream cut through the air like a knife.