Ayre

  I wanted to let you know how things happened after you passed out.

  First things first: the guy you saved? Probably a prince, also definitely cursed. I think he seems like a decent sort though, overall, and what happened to you was probably an accident, or at least the case of his obvious curse taking control for a brief moment while he was knocked out. Avoiding that happening again is easy! Simply don’t hold his right hand if the both of you wind up having some wonderfully romantic interactions while you’re recovering from your injuries. Left hand only!

  He did say he found you rather pretty, so keep that in mind once you’re up and about. Remember, probably a prince! Think about all the times we practiced for this exact scenario!

  When you wake up, he’ll have left the room, so you can take the time to read this and think about stuff. He’ll be waiting down by the dock to talk once you’re ready, make sure not to go too quickly, you don’t want to seem too eager, nobody likes those sordid stories where everything happens too fast.

  But, other, less important things. He seems like a nice guy, he doesn’t have any memories though (Really cool!) so don’t expect much from that. He definitely needs to learn how to talk to the Fae, so if you could help with that, that would be great.

  And… Sorry, I had to go! You know how the Court can be (Really not cool!). I’ll try to return when I can. Don’t go on any grand adventures without me. Falling in love is fine, though, just make sure it’s a good story!

  Lilly

  I turn and look at the fairy with heavily lidded eyes. “I’m not really sure what to say in response to this. But I think the idea of me not being in the room when she wakes up is probably a good idea, at least.”

  “I’m glad you’re beginning to recognize my brilliance.” She beams, “With that, though, I really do have to be going. Remember, people need a lot of water while they’re healing! If you need more info about caring for someone, you’ll probably find a book somewhere around here for it. Ayre is really into reading about boring stuff like that.” She pauses for a moment, thinking“ Also there's fire essence rich foods in the garden. She needs to eat those regularly. If she's only down for a couple days it'll be fine, but longer than that, and she'll start to get sick.

  Alright! Have fun! I’ll probably see you later!” And she immediately poofs into motion, leaving a scattering of golden dust in the space she was occupying a moment before, launching herself out the door. I stand there, hand raised, after having been about to ask about the rest of the letter.

  “Must just have been a way to guarantee that Ayre would know the letter was from her. She did talk pretty strangely as well, so it’s a good strategy I guess.” I fold the slightly crumpled letter three times and place it in the center of the table so its outermost message of “To Ayre” is facing the bed, propping it up against a candle and bracing the bottom with an inkwell.

  I stand in the middle of the room, listening to the gentle breathing of the draconic woman nearby, “So…what now?” I ask myself, realizing that I don’t actually have anything to do right away. I take stock of everything in the room, making a point of gently poking around into containers to get an idea of what is where. I find simple dried biscuits, dehydrated berries, and smoked meat inside an oblong clay jar that comes to my waist. They’re stacked in alternating layers with simple cloth between, and sorted into what appears to be daily rations of each. Very orderly. Idly, I grab a small piece of meat (making sure to only touch things with my left hand), and look it over with an odd sensation in my belly. Something hard to describe. Experimentally, I pop it into my mouth and begin to chew slowly.

  It’s entirely tasteless. “Is that normal?” I think to myself as I swallow. I grab a piece of bread and a couple of berries and try both. Equally tasteless, but as I put the lid back on the clay container, a wave of nausea washes over me. I feel my bile rising, and quickly rush outside, making it out just in time to retch into some nearby trees. Braced with both of my hands on the side of a tree while the feeling passes, I realize that I’m starting to feel better quickly. And as I look up, I see my hands on the trunk. Radiating outwards from the cursed(I really don’t have a better word for it yet) hand, the tree is losing its color and starting to break down into a sort of featureless dust. As it does so, I feel a sensation of taste in the back of my throat: herbal and somewhat metallic.

  Ironbark Tree

  Momentarily fascinated, I watch as the patch grows, but I hear the tree creak a few moments later after the whitening reaches the other side. It promptly falls about half a foot, crushing the discolored midsection, and begins to lean towards me. I stare at it as it falls towards me and the cabin behind me. Temporarily stunned at the turn of events, I subconsciously raise my hands to protect myself as I step backwards. “Move!” something screams in the back of my head, but I just reach out with my right arm, catching the falling tree with it. It’s heavy, but not unbearable, having been a fairly young tree on the edge of the clearing. I hear the leaves rustle at the shock of being caught, and concentrate on that sensation—the taste in my mouth.

  It tastes like the idea of metal. Of labor and sharpness. Of tools and blades. All mixed alongside the taste of trees. Mingling together to give me a clear picture of the composition of this thing I'm absorbing.

  Ironbark Tree

  Arbor, Mineralis

  With some effort, I start to pull on the tree's energy, drawing it through my hand and into myself. The process feels natural. It feels good. But before I realize it, the entire tree has turned shock white, and is starting to disintegrate in my hand, from trunk-to-leaves, at an incredible speed, not even having time to collapse into another falling piece before the whole thing is consumed and falls to dust, coating me in the powder.

  Ironbark Tree

  Arbor, Mineralis

  Hardening, Growth

  I stand there, dust falling around me, in a daze. Not entirely sure how to process what just happened. I take a deep breath as the dust settles, trying to center myself, but I feel something rushing up to the surface of my mind. Something terribly familiar, but something inhuman. I try to focus, but all I can think about is that I’m hungry. I attempt to stymie it, but it doesn’t let me. My mind calls up the memory of being unable to taste the “food”, and the retching afterwards. Then I settle on the remains of the surrounding tree, and think about how good it felt to do that.

  “I can do it more. I should do it more. I need to do it more. There's so many things here that I don't know, and they will all give me power. Power I can protect myself with. Knowledge to fill in blanks in my mind.” I reach down and pick a purple flower about the size of my hand with my right arm and hold it for a moment. When I squeeze the stem, I feel pinpricks of pain as thorns drive into my skin. A burning sensation follows, but I pay it little mind. It rapidly turns to dust in my grip, but I taste the essence. It tastes like poison and pollen, I think. Some distant part of my mind remembers smelling flowers, but this is more intense. It’s like I’ve taken the idea of a flower and drawn it in vibrant colors, boiling that drawing down into something tangible, and then drinking it in. I quickly gather a handful of the flowers and consume each in turn.

  Ferrithorn Lotus

  Venenum, Vitreous, Florii

  Projection, Penetration, Crystallization

  My vision shifts; slowly at first, but eventually until my perception has started showing me the energy all around me. I see the world in mottled whites and blacks: places where essence is and isn’t. My depth perception feels heavily skewed, as though looking through a spyglass with a wide lens. The trees hold what I recognize as plants and metal in equal measure, so I walk forward and wrap my hand around a sapling and feel its energy suffuse me while it falls apart. I feel those two types of essence pool inside me for a moment before dissipating as quickly as they came. “Too small. Not worth the effort. Something denser.” I think as I scan around, seeking brighter sources of energy.

  I settle on an area that is surrounded by a crude fence covered in essence rich vines, and see the ground covered in neat rows of glowing points of a complex form of energy: One made of effort and a cocktail of basal essence. I pick one of them up, hefting it with effort in both hands. It’s even bigger than my head. It feels ridged, but I rapidly lose the sensation of its shape as it starts to collapse in my grasp. It tastes complex. It’s a poor description but little more comes to mind, it seems to contain almost every form of basic essence. So I pick up another before the dust has fallen from the first. I absorb it greedily, and grab another, and another, and another.

  Embergourd

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Ignia, Messis, ??∴

  Resilience, Temperature Control, ????∴○?

  But they dissipate too quickly as well, and after consuming a half dozen, I feel something residual sitting within me that I cannot process. It sits like a lump within my awareness, and I try to will it away and after focusing for a few moments, I see it disperse through the miasmatic fissures in my arm as a silky, golden, fluid. The droplets land in amongst the plants at my feet and suffuse into the soil, spurring growth where they land. I stare down for a while, trying to figure out a meaning, but my vision is drawn to a bright energy source in the woods.

  It’s about three times my size, and moving quickly away from me. So I vault the fence in a burst of motion and begin to chase it. Low-hanging branches are smashed aside or grabbed and snapped off, being absorbed as I go. As I approach, the vessel panics, breaking into a faster run as it bleeds off essence at a high rate trying to escape. It’s wasting the energy and that’ can’t be allowed. I push myself to run harder, but it’s faster than me and moving more easily through the brush than I can.

  I slow to a stop and watch it, thinking for a moment how to best tackle the situation with my limited tools. As if by request, I feel the power I drew from the thorny, poisonous, flower come to mind and casually think about what I saw the winged vessel doing while repairing the other one I damaged. I try to force the energy into a crude shape in my mind's eye, like a cudgel. I feel it coalescing from the core of my being and into my hand. Looking at the purple miasma pouring from my hand, I see some sprouting crystalline vines with thorns growing between my fingers. With a thought, I complete the shape held in my mind, and throw my arm forward at the retreating ball of energy. As I do, a spray of darts of mottled purple and brown fires from my hand. They streak across the distance, and impact the ball with a series of wet tearing noises followed by a dull thud. I’m in motion before it’s even hit the ground, trying to avoid wasting even a second of energy if possible. When I arrive, I see it is writhing, the thorns protruding across one of its flanks and delivering their poison within. Its writhing steadily slows as I watch the poison circulating through its body and beginning to harden into metallic crystals, punching through its skin along the veins.

  It struggles and bleats, but I quickly silence it as I touch its flank, directly above the source of its energy—its heart. At the moment of contact I feel a far denser energy than the flower, tree, or crops. This is vital, it is fulfilling. And what I am presented with at the moment of its death feels far more complete than any of the information I’ve absorbed until now. It slams into my forebrain like a hammer as I experience what can only be this creature's last few minutes of life. Its thoughts are simple, a series of decisions to move, to stand, to eat, to drink. Nothing like my own thoughts initially, until I spot something standing in a clearing contained by a fence. I look on curiously for a moment -- it's a different thing than I normally see there.

  I see myself from another perspective and on realizing it, I feel an overwhelming sense of vertigo as I watch myself look at…myself turning to look at myself. From that point on, my and the creatures' memories overlap and I experience chasing and being chased at once. I dodge, dive, and dart around trees, but I can never quite get away until I give up on the chase. I feel momentarily relieved before a series of impacts strike my side, knocking me over. Almost immediately, I feel my muscles hardening to the point I can’t move. I watch myself struggling and lean down to both kill and die.

  Ironhide Elk

  Bestia, Mineralis

  Fortified Body, Resilience

  A beast known for having a Mineralis enhanced hide and antlers due to its diet that is rich in Ironbark root shoots.

  Its essence can be used to improve one's general physical resilience and strength, but will slow the user considerably.

  The information finally starts to process, and I find that I’m understanding the elk, it’s lifecycle, and general capabilities filling my mind readily. I push that information away for later. As I look back down, there’s nothing left. My vision is clearing, and I find myself kneeling inside a spreading cloud of off-white dust as a growing wind whips away the material that has yet to fall.

  Coming back to my senses, I look down at my arm, that arm, and see it pulse and glow as though with a life of its own. But shimmering at the end of my arm, on one of my fingers, I see the ring. It is shining a dull blue, and I feel a sense of calm slowly settling on my mind, driving away urges I just lost myself to for a little while. “What are you? Where did you even come from? And, maybe most importantly, why aren’t you getting absorbed like everything else?” I continue to stare at it for a little while while it pulses blue, but eventually stand to begin walking back towards the clearing with the cabin.

  I shake my head vigorously in order to clear my thoughts—like threshing grain from chaff—and in doing so, remember my appointed task. “Take care of Ayre. She’ll need a lot of water.” The fairy’s words come back to me, and I return to the clearing to search for a bucket to carry water with. Initially reaching to pick it up with my dominant hand, I stop myself and adjust, grabbing with my weaker arm instead. Taking it with me, I head to the nearby river, and draw the bucket full of fresh, clean water and return to the cabin. The whole journey takes twenty minutes, all told.

  Every motion feels along the way feels pantomimed, like I'm following some sort of step-by-step guide for walking, drawing water, and following paths. I still do them naturally, but every movement feels like mimicry as I go through it — other thoughts racing through my mind about what I'm doing, who I am, and countless other more esoteric topics.

  Breaking from my reverie, I see the sleeping woman. She seems to have rolled over at some point, and is now mostly on her back, her wings splayed out at awkward angles and her tail sticking straight out of the bed and coiled into an almost-knot against the wall. I set the bucket down next to her, slide the chair over and sit. As I reach for the bucket, I realize I have a problem. “How am I supposed to do this one-handed? I can’t hold the bucket with my right hand because it’ll probably break down…” I think through the problem, scanning the room. Finding what I was hoping for, I grab it from a nearby shelf—a cup, seemingly molded from a rich, red, clay before being fired into its current form. Thinking it’ll be small enough to pour more easily one-handed, I reach over with my other arm to lift her head from the pillow.

  I catch myself a moment too late, following motions that feel familiar in a distant way. And the moment I contact her hair, I feel a surge of red-hot essence pour into my hand through it, readily expanding the knowledge I gained earlier about her

  Ayre’A’khana

  Solar Dragon

  Malformed Gate(Inert), Greater Ignia Affinity, Minor Aero Affinity

  Guardian of the A’khana Shrine

  I instantly reel back, dropping the glass as I stand and recoil away from her. The glass shatters in the otherwise silent cabin, punctuating a distant scream of surprise that takes a few seconds for me to really process as my own. Her face changes from placid and peaceful to a grimace of pain. I stare at her for a while, stunned and fighting an urge that is rising in the back of my mind.

  “I can just take it. I’ll be far better off, and I won’t be saddled with this chore anymore. She was too weak to resist, so I'll take what she has. Her power, her knowledge. I'll… Just…take ... it…” I realize with a start that I’ve taken a few steps towards her with my right arm outstretched.

  “No!” I shout aloud and tear my eyes away from the vulnerable woman, taking deep breaths. “Okay… Okay. I need to focus. I’m fine unless I get surprised by it. So I just need to not get surprised by it. Simple.” I say out loud between ragged breaths. “The books, Lilly said there are books that could help.” I search the shelves speaking aloud to hold my own focus, frantically pulling out books and stacking them wherever I can, and find one sitting atop a pile of papers that is labeled: Triage and First Aid: Saving the Most With the Least already out on the table. I begin to flip through it, taking care to only touch it with my left hand.

  The book focuses almost entirely on using basic essence calling to hydrate a patient. Relying on Hydrus to both facilitate the healing process and to ensure the patient doesn’t dry up with the accelerated healing. Which is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that I don’t know how to call essence. None of my memories contain it, and I don’t have the time to go sifting through a dozen other books. Luckily, though, there’s a small footnote section at the end of that chapter that covers “the ill-advised manual methods”. They are ill-advised because the magical methods are safer, more reliable, and can be done by anyone! Anyone other than me, apparently.

  Grumpily, I read and reread the manual methods. “Having to do literally everything with one hand tied behind my back is going to get very old, very fast.” I spend the better part of a half hour reading aloud to center myself before I realize it’s darkening outside and getting harder to read since the cabin is on the far side of a cliff from the sunset.

  Putting what I’ve read into practice, I go back to the shelf and grab another glass, this one blue, and go to repeat the process. “I’ll try to replace the broken cup when I can, sorry.” I tell the sleeping draconic woman. This time, I use my left hand to wedge a pillow and a folded blanket beneath her head to raise her up a bit and tilt her head to the side, looking back at the book with every step to ensure I’m doing it right. “Damn book. Every single instruction explains things as though the reader can use two hands! Maybe they should have put some thought that maybe the person doing the care might be wounded themselves and included simpler instructions…” I grumble a bit and continue the frustratingly awkward process of juggling actions.

  Turning to double-check a specific entry in the book, I realize something peculiar. The knowledge is right there, sitting in the front of my mind as if I had the book open in front of me. A single read through granting me a nearly perfect recollection of the contents -- even pages and topics I only glanced over. It’s something I’ll have to look into more in the coming days, but it feels noteworthy. But that’s for later.

  Carefully reaching to her, I gently place my hand on the side of her scaled face. The scales lessen towards the center of her face, but never quite go away. Her skin is very soft, even the scales feel silky smooth if ridged. I shake my head, clearing the distraction to continue. I gently pull her mouth open and grab the glass to pour a couple of experimental drops from it for her. She seems to respond well, and I see her tongue flick out. It’s long and thin, at least compared to my own, with a fork at the end. Seeing this as an encouraging sign, I slowly feed her the water, a few drops at a time. The process takes the better part of an hour until I’ve given her the amount of water the book suggests, and by then, the sun has settled low in the far sky, beginning to hide from the world at large for the evening.

  I realize how tired I am at the same time I notice how dark it’s gotten. “When did I last sleep? It feels like it must have been days.” I yawn and my eyes water. I look around for a place I can sleep. With the bed occupied, I decide near the door is a good enough choice. That way, I discourage anything that might try to enter — After all, the doorway is apparently missing a door for some reason — from doing so. First I look around the room and find what must be her spear, deciding it's better than nothing. Then, sleepily, I lower myself to a sitting position, leaning against the frame and blocking half of it with my body. Before I can think any further, sleep claims me and I fall away into its chill embrace.