PSTH: Chapter Seventeen

The balance of essence within the spirit is important, which is why it’s easier to just aspect your essence to one element. Balancing two is harder, but doable, which is why there are plenty of Primals and magian who are dual typed. While there are a handful of historical records for humans managing to balance three types of essence without breaking their core, there have only been eight confirmed reports in the last three hundred years. You will not be one of them. I’m sorry, I don’t wish to be cruel, but it’s the simple truth. You won’t be. To demonstrate why, let’s look at some simple essence balance equations…

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A lecture on essence aspecting, given by guest speaker K. Crux, 399 Modern-Era

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It took me five days to bike all the way to Tourmaline City. I probably could have done it in two or three if I’d done really long days of nothing but biking, but I wanted to take it slow and actually enjoy myself. I only biked for about three hours each morning, before I’d pull off to the side of the road and wander in the woods until I found a clearing, then do a bit of training with my Primals, make lunch, and take a short afternoon nap before I headed off again. 

On the second day on the road, I stopped in Flint Town and spent the evening at a hostel, rather than camping on the road. Flint Town was a good bit bigger than Syenite Village, bordering on being Flint City, The guy running the Oceanseed National Hostel there was cute – dark skin, intense eyes, and a well-groomed goatee. Though, he looked to be almost thirty, which I figured was a bit too old for me. I did manage to find a shop that sold supplies specifically for tamers, where I met a woman in her late twenties in a bright green shift dress and sky blue eyes. She had been shopping through the collection of pre-made disks, something Yanette had never sold enough of to stock, and I’d been looking through them as well to see if there was anything interesting, when she spoke. 

“Oh, are you looking to become a professional tamer?” she asked, nodding to my belt where the storage gems hung. 

“That’s the dream,” I said, laughing slightly. “What about you?” 

“I’ve been in a few local tournaments, but I’m not a full professional,” she said, before nodding her head to the left. “There are some rings over that way. Care to have a battle?” 

“Sure!” I agreed, pulling out my Augpad. “I’m Aiden, by the way.” 

“Maria,” she said as she put the disks back on the shelf and we made our way outside. A moment later, she issued me a challenge, and I felt a spike of pride swell. I’d battled Laurel, that was true, but this had the official symbol of the Tamer’s Consortium marked on it. It wasn’t just a legal spar, it was more. It was my first duel under official rules. Maria hadn’t put anything up as a wager for the battle, so I didn’t either. Given that she was apparently semi-professional, it wouldn’t have been a smart idea for me to do it, and might even have tripped some of the mental health alarms in the system. It didn’t take me long to select the Primals that I would be using for the battle – I only had two, after all. Maria put forward two of her own, despite the fact I was willing to bet that she had more. 

The ring we arrived at was a large, blank concrete space, not too far from a skateboard and bike park, and set amongst a larger swathe of parks. There was a large circle painted on the ground, and some street art on one of the walls around the side of the ring. 

“Ready?” she asked, pulling a pair of storage gems from her purse. Each of them glowed the same sky-blue color as her eyes, and I could feel her magic flexing and pulsing as she tapped into them, gently probing the sleeping Primals within. 

“Ready!” I agreed, threading my own pastel yellow essence into my gems. An instant later, Scales and Hex emerged, both quickly pushing out their pneuma to assume their battle forms. Across from me, her primals were revealed: A Kirow and a Typhonix.

The Kirow was a simple, null element bird that somewhat resembled a four winged raven. When it assumed its battle form, it swelled to the size of a medium dog, and the feathers in its second set of wings grew sharper. The pressure coming off of the Primal was in the high thirties, and my augpad confirmed it was level thirty-eight. 

The Typhonix on the other hand was a large air and lightning Primal, like Ella the Procella. But where she resembled a living storm, the Typhonix looked much more like a massive eagle with four claws, causing it to have an oddly cat-bird like air. There were storms crackling between its feathers and between its claws. Its own battle form was easily five feet long, and lighting streaked out from its claws and eyes, forming long ribbons of blue – the second form of a Typhonix, a Tyrantophix. It was level forty, and I figured that it had to be Maria’s ace. 

Strong winds began to rise around the battlefield, pushing back on Scales and Hex, and then died. Hex’s ability was suppressing the gifts of everyone in the ring, and so the natural aid from the winds that a Typhonix and its allies possessed was rendered obsolete. 

It didn’t matter. The Kirow dove for Hex, who threw up a billowing Shadow Cloud. It gave her just enough time to dive to the side, evading the Pnuema Claw of the Kirow. At the same time, the Typhonix let out a cry, and a crackling bolt of lightning descended from the sky and slammed into Scales, instantly shattering his pneuma shell. Hex flipped, landing on her paws with the grace of a cat and launched Weakening Smog at the pair of opponents, but the Kirow dove out of the way, landing with a long, low swoop and snatching Hex up from the concrete. Her shell shattered a moment later, and the Kirow put her down. 

Maria whistled, and both of the battle forms vanished, before the pair of primals flew back to land on either of her shoulders. She grinned and walked over, extending her hand. 

“Won’t lie, when I saw neither of your Primals had even hit level fifteen yet, I assumed I’d take you out in one hit, but your Felimalio managed to dodge a bit. A good trick with the cloud of darkness, though Kalalala – that’s my Kirow – is probably a bit too used to being boosted by useful windstreams.” 

We spent a while chatting about the battle, and I even watched some of Maria’s battles against Councillors, before we split off our separate ways and I returned to my time on the road. 

When I finally biked up a hill and got a good look at Tourmaline City, it took a little bit of my breath away. The city was large – huge, at least to me. Sure, cognitively I was aware that half a million people was a big city, but not a huge one. The northern city-state of Frostbranch had more than fifteen times as many. But as someone from a village of a few thousand people, Tourmaline looked absolutely enormous. 

Skyscrapers, some of which had been originally built before essence had returned to the world, dominated the landscape, but they had been modified heavily since then. Bridges of rope and wood stretched from massive building to building. The panes of glass had been largely converted into enchantments gathering ambient essence and sunlight to turn it into power. The clear glass panes weren’t as effective for that purpose as dedicated panels, like the ones atop my house back home, but it was better to use what was there than needlessly destroy things. 

As I drew closer, I was able to better see some of the rooftop gardens, or the rooftop panels, as well as the long paths of fruit trees that split where there had once been the blacktop roads, save for the trolley in the center of the old road system, dinging softly as it made its stop, and the outermost sections along the sidewalks where low-enhancement bike lanes now stood. 

Most of the summer fruit trees were no longer bearing much, but the apple trees were laden with fruit, and the pear trees were starting to bloom. With the autumnal breeze in the air, I could smell some of it on the wind, the slightly pleasant, yet also slightly rotten scent of the fruit that had fallen to the ground. Bees and other insects buzzed around, keeping the cycle of pollination and life going. 

In a large circle around the city, there were a few essence enhanced lanes, converted from the old blacktop circle as well. Some people were blurring by, their pneuma dedicated heavily enough to speed, or spells boosting them enough that they were hard to see. Others were on bikes that had been much more heavily modified than my own, and were able to zip around at absurd speed, and a few of them were larger floating barges heading in and out, transporting things out of the city. There weren’t many, but some things did still need to be shipped out. 

I avoided the raised essence enhancement lanes, since I was in no way able to keep up with them, and headed into the city through a normal bike lane, stretching up and grabbing an apple as I did, munching on it as I headed deeper in. There were people seemingly everywhere, of every different description imaginable, and I did my best not to crash my bike due to the constant desire to look around. Here, a mother in a wheelchair was being pushed by a kid a few years younger than me, while there a man with enough essence to be at least level fifty paid for a coffee, and there a group of at least thirty kids were all involved in some sort of magiaball competition. Thirty of them! That would have been large enough to be my entire graduating class.

After some time, I pulled onto the sidewalk and began walking my bike as I fished my augpad out of my bag. It took a moment to connect to the Tourmaline City network, as well as to the local neighborhood network, but once I’d gotten on, I looked up directions to Rane’s college and sent her a message. She messaged back that she was in class for the next twenty minutes so I started making my way there, and got us a pair of coffees while I waited. The coffee shop was tended by a plant and fire magian in their level twenties, who grew the cluster of small fruits with a spell, then roasted them with another, before grinding them and making them into coffee. It was a bit late, but caffeine didn’t really keep me up, for whatever reason. 

When Rane showed up, I almost didn’t recognize her at first. She was in a bright turquoise blouse and some denim pants, with a backpack over one shoulder and a camera around her neck. That wasn’t new, but she’d shaved half of her head, while letting the other half grow out. Her earrings were long and loopy, a style she’d not worn back when we were in school, and there was some charcoal under her eyes. Rane had never bothered to awaken her essence, so her eyes were a mundane dark brown. 

Though she’d changed her fashion up a bit, I was still relieved to see my friend, and bolted up, pulling her into a side-hug so as not to smoosh her camera. 

“Rane! How are you? What’s with the hair? It’s cool, but it’s so different! What’s college been like?” 

At the same time as I began my babbling, Rane was talking. 

“Aiden! You look good, you’ve gotten more muscular! I still can’t believe you actually got to meet Vincent Angon! So you’re an official tamer now? What happened?” 

Practically in unison, we both said: “Tell me everything!”