Totem 17. All About The Cores

"Get up, Seth," Ash commanded.

I gritted my teeth, attempting to rise, but it felt as if my limbs were made of jelly. They lacked any strength. I managed to hoist myself into a sort of half-crouch but couldn't muster the energy to fully stand. I fell back onto my ass, landing in several inches of churned-up mud.

Annika was bent over, gasping for breath. I couldn't imagine how suffocating it must've felt beneath those veils. Russell stood by her side, his expression blankly shocked.

Ash was the only one close enough to help me... but he didn't. Jerk.

"I can't get up," I wheezed out, coughing. "I've got nothing left."

In a swift motion, Ash knelt by me, gripped my chin, and stared intensely into my eyes as if searching for something. "You didn't take from your Totem. Tell me you didn't."

Did I? I silently wondered. But the answer came to me immediately. "No, of course not. It… it just gave me everything it could during that attack. I didn’t take it."

"What does that mean?" Annika asked, coming up to us. She still seemed winded, and I didn't like the idea of her stomping around in the mud while she likely still had stitches, but there was no time to worry about that. Gangrene was a concern for the future.

Ash studied me for a moment, as if seeking deception. He must have been satisfied with what he found because he released me with a snort and stood again. "If you follow the pure path, you never extract power from your Totem like juice from a fruit. To do that is to rob your future self of power."

That was an intriguing nugget of information. I stored that for later. Ash rarely gave straight answers.

Russell looked perplexed, but Annika simply shook her head slowly. "But... aren't you supposed to? That’s how you do magic, right?"

Huh. I guess Annika’s parents gave her more advanced knowledge than mine did with me.

"If that's the path you follow," Ash replied dismissively. “The path to easy, immediate power.” He turned to me. "Are you sure you have nothing left? How is your gosling? Is it injured?”

I took a moment to peer inside myself. The Gosling, my totem, was curled up, fast asleep within my core..

The core itself was illuminated by an inner glow, and of course, the ever-present halo around it. I assumed that was its reserve power. But the space beyond the core was pitch black, utterly devoid of energy. It was strange, especially since we were in the presence of a gigantic spirit beast. You’d think there would be a lot of free flowing energy around.

"The core itself isn't dark," I admitted, noting Ash's shoulders relax slightly. "It's just all the..." I waved my hand around vaguely, "...free-floating stuff around it is gone."

"Good, you didn't manage to fatally injure your Totem with this foolishness," he grumbled.

I choked on air. "Wait, that’s a thing that can happen? You can kill your own Totem?"

"I'm sure you've heard of the word suicide?" Ash shook his head. "One final burst of power that will consume you... and most enemies, and your friends or allies. It's not a pleasant sight." He eyed me.

I blamed my exhaustion and the adrenaline crash from the recent life-or-death fight for my next words. "So, like a supernova, then?"

"Su-pa no-va?" Annika repeated, placing a strange emphasis on the vowels.

And I instantly realized why. It was an English word. Damn it. Get it together, Seth!

"Just a story my parents used to tell me about stars exploding," I explained hastily.

Russell scoffed. "How can stars explode? They're lights in the sky.”

"I don't know what that is," Ash snorted, his casual indifference so genuine that I was convinced he was telling the truth. That squashed my half-formed guess that he might know something about Earth. No, he was just a wise old man, a native of this planet.

"But yes, it's possible, and it would have been a shame," Ash continued, pointing at the giant tortoise. "This was clearly beyond your level. Why didn't you back up and try to attack it from different angles? Instead of head-on?"

I opened my mouth, a retort ready on my lips, then closed it again. I... didn't know.

Now that I thought about it, now that I replayed the battle, I hadn't once considered retreating. After all, it wasn't like the spirit turtle could chase us. Not only was it a turtle, but on closer inspection, it was also encased in sticky, clinging mud. Half-buried and completely trapped. Ash was right; we could have surrounded it from all angles and distracted it one by one. But some primal instinct to protect my friends — to protect my flock — had propelled me to confront a larger, much stronger creature.

I guess I really was a goose.

"You need to work on curtailing your instincts," Ash said, and I realized he'd been watching me closely, probably waiting for that epiphany. "You need to be smarter about choosing your battles."

"Well, what about you?" I shot back, feeling slighted. "You took off hours ago. Did you know this thing was here?"

"Not only did I know, but I’ve found two more, even more powerful, in the other villages," he said. "As I said, I was scouting."

And probably watching us flail around and risk our lives, I suspected. But most of my attention was taken on what he had just said.

"Wait," I blurted, shocked. "You're telling me there are two more of those monsters out there?"

"They're not monsters," Ash corrected me. "They're corrupted spirit beasts.”

“You're the one who literally calls the stuff inside them 'monster cores.'"

"Why are they here? Were they sent by the Deformed, somehow?" Annika asked, her voice laced with worry.

Ash turned to her, I think, with a hint of relief, given her more agreeable reaction. "No, child, the spirit beasts are also Deformed... in their own way. They are drawn to the Deformed villages because of the potent energy they emit. Once your Totem is revealed to you, you too, will feel the energy.”

This raised an important question. "I don't feel a damn thing."

"Of course you don't," he replied, sounding exasperated as he turned back to me. "This spirit beast has been here, cultivating it. As you might have noticed, it's significantly larger than you."

So, it seemed like it had sat here and vacuumed up all the natural energy around. That really sucked for me because it meant refilling my Gosling Core would be that much more challenging.

"I sense that you're beginning to grasp the problem," Ash said, sounding annoyed. "It will take longer than usual to recover your strength. And I don’t think you realize that you were moments away from a berserker suicide attack. If you hadn't killed the beast, you would have taken yourself, it, and possibly your two companions down with you."

I was tempted to object, to say that Annika and — certainly not Russell — were my friends... but I wasn't that much of a jerk. Besides, the idea that he might be right was scary. And the thought that he’d known all this and possibly stood by watching was infuriating.

So, he was going to be that kind of teacher? Damn it.

"In any case, we might as well make the best of a bad situation,” Ash said. “There's a remedy for this, luckily one within reach. This time, you will watch, and for the next corrupted spirit beast, you will assist in the harvest."

"Wait, are you saying that you want Seth to fight them again?" Russell asked. “After he almost died? Why don’t you do it?”

Wow, was he actually annoyed on my behalf?

No, that was probably just my ears playing tricks on me.

"No," Ash responded. “These monsters are far beneath me. I expect you all to fight—especially if you want a part of the reward."

Russell and Annika perked up noticeably. "What reward?" Russell asked.

“Monster cores, of course.”

****

Unsurprisingly, extracting the monster core from the corrupted beast was a real pain in the ass. Not only was the thing shielded by a thick-ass shell, but that shell was also buried in the mud.

Thankfully, in its final moments of thrashing while I literally burned it down to the spine, the turtle managed to dislodge one hind foot. There was a gap in front of that foot which allowed Ash to cut through to the inner body.

But, to do it, Ash still had to use his Puma claw attack.

Basically, I just sat on my ass in the very cold and squelchy mud, trying to cultivate energy as best as I could. As Ash said, the air had been sucked dry, but now that the giant spirit beast was no longer alive, a few wisps filtered back in. I took advantage of them as best as I could.

I got a small bit of satisfaction when Ash had to reach in up to his shoulder to pull out the core. Or... should I say cores?

First, there was the main core the size of a golf ball, which... yikes. I wasn't swallowing that anytime soon. Then there were a bunch of tiny little cores, ranging in size from a grain of sand to pearls.

All were blackened and striped with different shades of corruption. The giant golf ball monster core was particularly odd, with its corruption looking more yellow and pus-like rather than rotted.

Ash made no bones about sticking the big core into his own pocket, then he handed me one of the pearl-sized corrupted cores.

"Process this—carefully," he instructed. "I suspect this originally came from some kind of bird totem, so it will be easier for you."

"How can you tell?" I studied the core. It looked no different than any other.

"Once you advance, you get a feeling for these things," Ash explained.

"What do we get?" Russell asked.

"Additional cores to sell. You’re too young to process these. And if you ignore me and try, and process these incorrectly, which you most likely will, you will become highly corrupted yourself. But,” he added,  “they should make a good profit on the market."

"Is that why you took the largest one?" Annika asked, pointedly.

"Of course," Ash replied.

I forced myself to remember that he had given me some cores free of charge—pure cores at that. Though I doubted that those were worth as much as the giant golf ball one.

"You want me to swallow this?" I asked, doubtfully, looking at the pearl-sized core.

This thing was big. And it wasn’t like someone had a nice fresh bottle of water lying around. I wasn’t going to drink the stuff sitting in the puddles.

"No, in this case, I want you to practice absorbing through your hands. It is a bit of an advanced technique, but it will allow you to more easily filter out the corrupted energy," Ash instructed.

He looked around. "We will make camp tonight. And tomorrow, we will go after the second beast. And this time, I expect you not to drain yourself dry along the way."

"Give me a core," Annika held out a hand, and for the first time, her fingers slipped out from underneath the veil. I noticed her ring finger was missing a joint. The end was raw and red, but at least sealed.

"Are you sure? It can be dangerous," Ash warned.

Her hand didn’t waver. "I don’t care. I need to get stronger.”

He handed her one of the pearl-sized cores.

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