PSTH: Chapter Twenty-Four

Lightning essence! It’s got two main attributes that make it stand out: speed and power. When powering pnuema, it has a strong preference to empowering speed, and when its anima is used in spells, they tend to hit really hard. There’s actually something interesting with that. Did you know pretty much all of the tech from before magic ran on electricity? There was a pretty big gap between essence based physics and non-essence physics, which is one of the reasons so many of the devices weren’t able to survive the shift. The sudden addition of essence caused their batteries to hold way more power than they should, and some of them actually exploded. Wild, right?! Anyways. Lightning essence…

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Intro to the ninth in a video essay series about essence types and their unique factors, 454 Modern-Era

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I was glad that I’d agreed to go out with Rane and her boyfriend. We had a great dinner at a local pizza place that used an old fashioned, wood-fired pizza oven, and made all of the pizzas to order based on what was available. Since I was still riding a bit high on the fact that I had defeated Councillor Cruz, I even sprung to pay the extra tax on imported meat, and got some beef and pork meatballs on my pizza. 

They also sold their own apple, birch, and pear soda, and I wasn’t sure what exactly it was they’d done to it, but it had an amazing sort of burning, bubbly aftertaste that was entirely unlike any of the sodas that people made back home. I really enjoyed it, and actually bought a case of six to carry in my backpack, since I wasn’t sure when I’d pass through Tourmaline City next. 

Rane’s boyfriend – who I learned was named Jared – was perfectly pleasant, a tall, dark skinned man who seemed to be entirely hairless, to the point where he didn’t even have eyebrows. I was admittedly a little curious about why, but I wasn’t going to be rude enough to ask about it. He was majoring in tailoring, with a minor in business, since he was hoping to eventually open his own clothing store. It was clearly something he was very passionate about, as he spent quite a while talking about the different kinds of nails and screws that were used in shoes, and how each of them had specific uses for specific effects.

I hadn’t ever really put that level of thought into shoes or clothing before, but it was always a fun thing to see someone pursuing something they were passionate about – after all, I’d rather the person who ran a clothing store or cobbler’s shop be interested in their niche hobby than simply have them be produced by someone who couldn’t care less. 

After eating, we spent a bit of time, roaming around and looking at various stores. My personal favorite was a sweets shop run by an older magian, who layered specific bits of magic into the various sweets. They sold mints infused with small bits of essence for Primals, just like the ones that Gawain had fed Scales and Hex. The pair of Primals begged me to buy them some, so I bought a small box, and gave each of them one of the minty candies. 

But mints weren’t the only magical treats that the shop sold. There were jars full of small, hard, red candies that would allow a person to blow a harmless stream of red fire from their mouths while sucking on them, about the same warmth as a summer breeze. There were boxes of cookies, imbued with spells that would cause a person’s hair color to rapidly shift between random colors for an hour. There were chocolates that would allow you to throw your voice for a few minutes. 

None of the effects were anything that I’d get use out of for a battle, but that really wasn’t the point of the shop. If I wanted to get something like that, I’d be better off heading to a taming or general supply shop. These were fun, and they were meant to be fun.

“What happens if I eat one of the cookies?” Rane’s boyfriend asked, and the older person running the shop smiled at him, patting his hand in the kind of affectionate manner only old people seemed able to fully pull off. 

“Well, I imagine the magic wouldn’t have much, if any, hair to latch onto, so it’d probably just sit in your body, slowly bleeding out till it faded. But if you’re looking for something else, these caramels will give you temporary tattoos that swirl and shift!” 

After checking for walnut contamination, I also purchased a scoop of the fire candies, since they were spicy cinnamon, one of my favorite flavors, and we headed out to shop a bit more, and ran into Rane’s favorite shop of the night, an art supply shop. Though not everything that we looked at was useful for her photography, there were all sorts of different wooden frames available, and even some services for printing pictures out onto canvas. 

That wasn’t the really interesting part, though. The store was doing a finger painting workshop tonight, and we paid the nominal fee for the supplies and participation. I had more fun than I’d expected, just letting go and trying my best to use my thumbs to create an artistic rendition of Scales and Hex. I thought that Scales looked half decent, but Hex’s cyan eyes were so big that they almost covered her entire face. 

The workshop was only about an hour, and so Rane and Jared convinced me to stay out a bit longer and browse for clothing, both at the places that actually created clothing wholesale like Jared wanted to, the refurbishing shops that took disparate chunks of fabric from a thousand sources and worked them together into something that looked good, and good old-fashioned secondhand shops.

I didn’t know if I should have predicted it, or if it would have been stereotyping to assume it, but Rane’s boyfriend’s seemed to come alive while shopping for clothes. At one point we found a zippered shirt being examined by a tattooed girl and bleach blond haired tamer, and after they left, Jared spent a while contemplating over the shirt, talking about the assorted merits of zippers as a practical and fashionable choice. 

He suggested I try on a crop-top version of the zippered shirt with a mesh undershirt and some black dyed skinny jeans, but I flatly refused. Annoyingly, my stupid brain immediately pictured Gawain in the outfit, because of course it did. He was attractive, even if he was a prick, and I was lonely watching Rane and Jared walk hand in hand. I would have probably had the same thought with any attractive man I’d spent time with recently, so I shoved the thought out of my brain and returned to the moment. 

Though I didn’t get anything nearly so fancy or dramatic as the zippered shirt, I did purchase a hoodie that was a mixture of soft grays and yellows. The yellow matched my eyes almost exactly, while the grays were similar, but contrasting, to my white hair. 

It, like any clothing, was expensive. The hoodie cost me more than half of what I’d made from my battle with Councillor Cruz, but it was worth it. I’d only packed one jacket, and with winter coming quickly, I’d need the sweatshirt soon. Besides, clothes were the kind of purchase that could last me for years, if not decades, especially with a little maintenance. 

By the time that I finally got back to the hostel, it was late, and I did my best to quietly enter the room, but either Gawain was a light sleeper, or I was much less successful than I’d intended, because the instant after I stepped inside, a pair of glowing lavender eyes pierced through the dimness of the Primal illuminated room. 

“Oh,” Gawain said, sounding… I wasn’t even sure. There was a cavalcade of different emotions in his voice, though the easiest ones for me to pick out were annoyance, the faint fog of sleepiness, and a hint of relief. I didn’t think it was relief at seeing me, though. More like relief that it was only me. 

“Sorry,” I said in a hushed voice. 

“I figured you had moved on,” Gawain said. “Saw you used the drone footage, figured…” 

He trailed off and yawned, which caused me to yawn, which caused Scales to yawn. 

“Figured you’d edited it on the train.” 

I paused, my brain spinning quickly as I processed what felt like an informational overload. For one, Gawain was actually talking to me like a person, instead of making demands or–

“Go to bed,” Gawain demanded. “M’ sleepy.” 

I sighed and nodded, then hoisted Scales under one arm and climbed up into the top bunk. While I sat there, though, my brain returned to the comment Gawain had made. He’d actually bothered to look at my video? Why? 

I wiggled and pulled my augpad out, turning the blue light filter on and putting the brightness down almost as far as it could go, and opened the Tamer’s Consortium site again, then looked at my short, minute-long video’s analytics. The first like had been from my mom, and then one from some of the people in the village, then from Rane. All about what I’d expected. 

The next two likes that I’d gotten had come a little bit later, and I wasn’t sure if I was surprised or not: Laurel’s account, and a guest account who I assumed was River. It diverted my attention for a moment, as I flicked over to Laurel’s page and made sure that I’d liked her stuff when I had gone through and watched it after our initial duel. To my slight shame, I hadn’t, so I went through and liked all of her stuff, then made sure I was following her. 

A redacted account had liked my short video after Laurel and the guest, which was a line of text I’d never seen before in the system, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was Vince. He worked for the Consortium, so him liking anything would be a major mark of favoritism, as it would be shown to his fans. That was the kind of thing that could create tamer dynasties, and nobody wanted those around. Thus, a redacted account that gave me a like, but not the signal boost of a Regent liking my video. It still warmed my heart to see it. 

After the redacted account, I got a like from Gawain’s tamer page. Seeing that, I flipped over to Gawain’s page and raised an eyebrow. The man had not only put out a short video highlight, but he’d also done a one-minute breakdown, and a full thirty minute breakdown. I had no idea how he edited so fast! Still, I liked each of them, then flipped back to my analytics. 

Gawain’s like had sent a small group of others who, apparently, were already paying attention to the young tamer over to watch my version of the shortform video. Objectively, I knew that a dozen likes and just shy of a hundred views wasn’t much. There were people who watched the Tamer’s Consortium duels from all over the world, and people like Vince had millions of people watching their videos. But heart’s truth, in that moment, seeing that I’d gotten views and even a few likes from strangers felt like everything. Sure, I wasn’t raking in huge numbers, or getting donations from people who enjoyed my video, but it was still so much more than I’d ever expected. 

Beating Councillor Cruz had shown me that I wasn’t totally off the mark when it came to the taming side of things. Beating one Councillor was hardly a guarantee that I’d be fighting in any tournaments, but it showed I had some skill as a Tamer. 

But getting those handful of views and likes? That showed me that I might be able to make it in an entirely different sort of way. Not only was I competent enough to win fights, but I was competent enough to be entertaining to watch. 

With those warm feelings inside of me, I shut off my augpad and set it to charge, then closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.