PSTH: Chapter Nineteen

Any species with essence possesses an innate power that operates with no need for external power. We call these ‘gifts’, though other names have been used: talents, legacies, species’ attributes, and more. Whatever you call them, there is an interesting difference between biological creatures with essence, like awakened humans or essence beasts, and creatures made entirely of essence, like Primals. Most Primals of the same species tend to have the same gift: cloudingos all have the flight spell innately without counting against the four slots within a core. Sometimes, however, Primals will manifest or change their base gift into a different gift, one that’s usually a stronger variant of the base gift, termed an ‘evolved gift’. 

When it comes to biological creatures like a sheep turned essence beast or a human who has awakened their essence, however? We all seem to have the same gift: we may aspect a null core into other types. Across the billions of known people who have awakened their essence throughout history, there’s never been an example of a  biological creature with an evolved gift, either through birth or through transformation. Even magians who have managed to harness mystic jewels keep the same basic gift…

-

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

-

I woke up the following morning to find Hex standing on my chest, batting at my nose with one of her paws. I let out a groan and lifted her off, then tried to go back to sleep. I managed to succeed for a few minutes before she was doing it again. By the third time it happened, I got out of the bed with a groan, sliding down the ladder and yawning. I cast a quick glance around the room to find that Gawain wasn’t around. I shrugged and began applying a muscle cream to my legs, then ran through my morning ablutions, and headed downstairs to the hostel’s kitchen, glancing at the allergen warning on the door, just in case they happened to be serving anything with walnut flour.  

Being free housing, the food that the hostel offered for breakfast wasn’t anything crazy, since the anima and credit budget were both mindful, but they were still filling. It just wasn’t like they were going to spring for eggs or meat or anything like that. There were baskets of apples and pears, collected from the public orchards, loaves of bread and peanut butter from one of the three dozen peanut farming villages scattered throughout the countryside. There were two large bowls of porridge, one of them a soft red winter wheat, and the other some barley. I didn’t get that much of either back home, since it had to be shipped in from some of villages further west 

I grabbed a slice of toast and slathered on some peanut butter, grabbed some of the barley porridge, added a bit of honey, and cut up one of the apples, before tossing it into my porridge and settling down to eat. I gave Scales an apple slice, but Hex seemed to be disinterested in the entire process and instead found a cushion to curl up on and wait for the entire thing to be done with. A few people came in and out, getting their own breakfasts. After I finished mine, I rinsed my bowl, then set them in the sanitizer, before stretching and tossing my bag over my shoulder and heading out. I unlocked my bike, and the three of us set off toward the Tamer’s Consortium offices.

The offices were huge, taking over a pre-arrival skyscraper, though it had been massively remodeled and retrofitted with a dozen different enchanted 

It felt a bit gross to see so much space being used, but it really was by necessity. While this was an administrative building, it also had specialized training facilities free for use to members of the Tamer’s Consortium. They had a half-dozen rings for tamers to train or battle in. They contained a massive amount of the hardware used to store the recordings for battles and downloading them from the recording augpad or local cameras and uploading them for anyone to watch. And if all that wasn’t enough, there were the Councillor challenges. 

I pushed through the doors into the lobby and found a handful of people milling about, some of whom were doing paperwork, others were chatting, and some seemed to be coming out of the gym. After a brief wait, I got to talk to one of the secretaries, a man in his fifties, with graying hair and a silver-streaked beard, who quickly scanned my Tamer ID, clicked through my information, then looked up and smiled. 

“Well, how can I help you young man?” he asked. “Were you looking to train in our gym facilities? We do have a combat simulation against waves of level three Squarrels that might be good for an endurance fighter like your Scales there.” 

That was good to know, and I made a mental note of it. Then I remembered that was what I’d done with the moving cultivation exercises, and I’d totally forgotten to work on those while I was on my way here, so I flipped into my notes section and actually wrote it down before shaking my head. 

“No, I was hoping to get a slot for a battle with Miguel Cruz? It’s my first Councillor battle.” 

He tapped away at his augpad for a few moments before running me through the standard list of questions about any accommodations I needed to add to my file, double checking the levels of my primals, the liability waivers for any actions I chose to take, and all the other stuff, before he finally finished punching in the information. 

“Well, ain’t that something! Congratulations, it’s your lucky day.” 

“How’s that?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. “Do you have an open slot today?” 

“More than that, son. Not sure if you looked at the leaks or not, but Miguel’s current challenge is a twofer. It takes two people workin’ together to finish it. You and someone else both came in today to take part, so you’ll be able to take on the challenge.”

I hadn’t actually looked at the posts by Tamers who went against Consortium rules and talked about the challenge openly on forums, as I felt like it somewhat defeated the point of the challenge, but for the first time, I wondered if I should have. If I had known that I needed to coordinate with someone beforehand, I might have tried to take Miguel on with Laurel after visiting Arkose. I put on a smile and nodded, though, rather than let my irritation for having to work with someone, let alone someone entirely random, show on my face. 

“I suppose it is my lucky day,” I gritted out. “Who is this person I’m going to have to work with?” 

“I think that would be me,” a voice said from behind me. I spun around and let out a groan. Standing there, with his long dark hair tied back with a long yellow ribbon, sharp angular features complimented by a sharply tailored white and gold patterned shirt, black jeans, and glowing lavender eyes, was Gawain. His moth-like primal was perched on one shoulder, and he had a Cyric.

I was torn between two different emotions at once. On one hand, I wanted to groan that I was going to have to work with someone who had pretty clearly come across as a touted up spoiled rich kid.

On the other hand, he had a Cyric! The rare Primals looked something like a cross between an armadillo and a hedgehog, with a shell made of floating shards of ice that slowly orbited around a small, fuzzy form covered in armor made of a crystalline substance that somewhat resembled blue topaz. They were somewhat famous, at least within the taming circuit. 

Plenty of famous Tamers had bonded to Cyrics, and the dual aspects of ice and earth worked together well, leaving them only weak to metal and combat aspect spells. The standard pneuma allocation and ousia wave for the Primals gave them defenses roughly on par with Scales’ own, and they had a much larger anima pool, though their pneuma shell’s physical strength and speed did suffer for it in comparison. Of course, those downsides were more than made up for by their gift, which reflected a portion of any damage that their pneuma shell took.

The fact that he had at least one powerful rare Primal, and what I was assuming was another rare or perhaps even an epic, did make me a bit jealous. Credits might not make someone a better tamer, and with enough refinement, it was possible for even a common Kirow’s ousia weave to match a legendary. But it sure was useful for cutting down the amount of hard work someone had to put in. 

“Are you just going to stare at my Primals all day?” Gawain asked wryly. “Or are you actually going to say something.” 

My focus snapped up to his pastel purple eyes and I put my hands on my hips. 

“I’m taking in who I’m going to be working with. Is that so bad?” 

“Why didn’t you just scan them?” Gawain asked, a bit irritated, but also sounding genuinely slightly confused. “I scanned your Sharmond and Felimalio last night, and looked up your fight records.” 

The man behind the desk snorted, and I could practically hear his eyebrows waggling. I did my best not to blush at the phrasing as I dug my augpad out of my bag and scanned the Primals.

“Pardon, do you two mind taking a seat? We’ll call you when everything for the challenge is set up,” the secretary said, and I jerked my head in a nod, flipping through the information about his Cyric and his Wyfynod – that was what the Rare fire aspect moth Primal was. It was heavily focused on anima, giving it massive spellpower, and the breed’s gift allowed their anima to power lightning and radiant spells at the same efficiency as fire magic. 

I noted that as something to be worried about, in case the challenge involved us battling against one another at any point. Even though Hex’s presence should help to shut down some of his team’s powers, given how gift dependent they were, the Wyfynod would still likely have lightning spells. Even if there was a higher anima cost for using them, if the moth was able to blast Scales with lightning from range, it would be bad. I’d need to have Hex go after the Wyfynod right away, while Scales tangled up the Cyric. Without gifts in play, Scales should be able to leverage his superior might to slowly wear it down, or at least last until–

“Here’s the plan,” Gawain said, pulling me out of my train of thought. I looked up to see him staring at me with his burning lilac eyes. “You’re going to push me through the first obstacle on the rightmost path, since you–” 

“Excuse me? What makes you think you get to decide on our plan? Or that I should start by boosting you?” 

“Becuase it’s the right plan,” Gawain snapped. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

“What did you just call me?!” 

“An idiot. Because you’re acting like one. The first obstacle should be a breeze for anyone with even an Aquarb to get through, which means t–” 

“I don’t want to know,” I interrupted. Gawain paused and blinked. 

“What?” he asked, seemingly at a loss. 

“I don’t want to know,” I repeated. “If I wanted to know what we would be facing, then I’d have looked online. But I don’t. I want the integrity of the contest 

Gawain’s eyes flicked back and forth several times, as if he was either contemplating or looking something up on an implant. After a few moments he sighed, and the Wyfynod on his shoulder 

“Fine, that will have to work. But! You need to work with me,” he said, shooting me a glare. “I’m serious. You and I have different skills. My team can do things yours can’t, and vice versa. You have a Sharmond.” 

“Scales,” I said. “His name is Scales. And my Felimalio is named Hex.” 

At his name, Scales tilted his head like a dog, sitting back on his haunches and waving his shark-like tail. Hex, on the other hand, exemplified the elements of her Primal species that she had in common with cats, and completely ignored us both. A small smile crossed Gawain’s lips as he reached around the orbiting spikes and patted the ice shell of his Cyrix with one hand, and used his other to scratch between the antennae of his fuzzy mothlike Wyfynod. 

“My Wyfynod is named Gryphon, I’ve had him since I was – since my essence awakened. My Cyrix is named Gabis. He’s a new addition to my team.” 

Gawain stopped petting his primals and reached into a small belt pouch that I hadn’t noticed before, then removed four small, round objects. Judging by the tiny traces of essence coming off of them, just enough to notice without actually being any sort of real cultivation aid, I was guessing they were some sort of treat or lure used for Primals. He tossed one to each of the Primals, then withdrew a fifth and popped it in his own mouth. I could smell the faint scent of butterscotch as he did.

As he and the Primals were sucking on the essence infused candies, a door on the far end of the lobby opened, and someone called out. 

“Gawain and Aiden? Your challenge is ready, please come with me.”