The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage

[72] What Do You Know About Aether

Racial Evolution Progress
You have met the requirements to ascend Racial Hierarchy. Your core has been touched by the Infernal Planes, and where some would crumble you have thrived. New options unlocked. Please select one option to evolve.

Current: Wendigo (Normal)
Creation of the Forest Father to dominate nature as the apex predator of the forest.

Evolution 1: Nature's Wrath (Greater)

Your core is one that is malleable and fluid. It can twist and bend without breaking. It can resist the corruptions of the Higher Planes. You have felt the power of that which is higher and resisted its corrupting properties. Nature’s Wrath will purge this power from you and in return grant you a progenitor’s boon. You shall ascend as the Sorceress of Domination, consumer of the weak. Your blood will carry this power to all who come from your lineage. Gain the following to your current stats:

Vitality: +20
Restoration: +20
Constitution: +10
Willpower: +75
Strength: +15
Dexterity: +15
Stamina: +10
Maya: Excised
Magic: +300
Magic Regeneration: +400

All currant magic abilities < Replaced with Domination Sorcery

All currant maya abilities < Excised

Evolution 2: Herne Hunter (Greater)

You have welcomed the maya into your very core and altered your connection to this dimension and that of the Infernal Planes. Surrender what remains of your core to the maya and forsake this realm's grasp on you. Become the predator amongst prey and destroy those who threaten you. Herne Hunter will turn you into an instrument of passion and power, drawing from the depths of the Infernal Planes. Gain the following to your current stats:

Vitality: +25
Restoration: +50
Constitution: +50
Willpower: +10
Strength: +35
Dexterity: +20
Stamina: +15
Maya: + 660
Magic: Excised
Magic Regeneration: Excised

All current magic abilities < Excised

All current maya abilities < Strengthens with Emotions

Please assign Racial Hierarchy within 2 day(s) or evolution(s) will be lost.
Evolve into Nature's Wrath (Greater Wendigo) [Yes/No]
Evolve into Herne Hunter (Greater Wendigo) [Yes/No]

Tanisha couldn’t believe what she was looking at for a moment. The explanation of her potential evolutions were counter to one another. 

One would make her into a progenitor of a sorcery bloodline, one of domination, which meant she had the potential to start the only other sorcery bloodline aside from the Royal Family of Yuhia. 

That fact alone would mean she could found a new wendigo kingdom or legitimately contest the current Royal Family for the right to rule. She wasn’t strong enough now to do either, and most likely wouldn’t be for a century or two. Something even more tangible was the dream of any wendigo: to assure her family was powerful and that her bloodline would forever be that way. Tanisha was a wendigo, she loved the idea of power like any other of her species, and guaranteed generations of power was a dream come true. She almost chose the option for that alone. 

She couldn’t help but think that if she had been powerful to begin with, none of this would have happened. She would have been accepted by her family, raised to be nobility and loved. She could have helped her older sister in the war and perhaps Helga would still be alive. So much would have changed, but then Tanisha wouldn’t have met Tyr, Joha, Helina, Owen or anyone else. In fact she might have been the one sent to kill them with Thyra and Loki as her allies. The idea soured her excitement as she thought about it longer.

It would also remove maya from her body; she would no longer be able to use the enigmatic energy. Not to mention that being a sorceress would mean that she would no longer be able to use any other magic but those granted by her sorcery. Domination was ambiguous as to what she would be able to do. Sorcery didn’t follow the typical rules of magic. It became inherent to the person, as much a part of them as a hand or leg, but didn’t allow one to use mana the same way as a mage. 

The description, consumption of the weak, was also concerning. During the time of the first king, wendigo did consume the bodies of enemies who were killed in combat. Would becoming Nature's Wrath require that she does the same? Wendigo no longer ate the flesh of the other sentient races, and hadn't done so in two thousand years. She liked to believe that the wendigo, and especially herself, were above stooping to those more barbaric times.

On the other hand, the Herne Hunter would remove her entirely from the grace of the Forest Father. Maya had no place in the Great Forest which lies beyond death for the wendigo. She would deny rest and the afterlife to herself and all others of her kind. She knew nothing of the afterlife for demons, but she had felt the dark power of their home and did not wish to go where that power originated. She was already a demonic entity, but that may just be because she was a Sage of the Infernal. She still believed her soul was hers, she had not sold it to the Infernal Planes. 

Evolving did mean more power now, but what would it mean for her as a sage? The path of the sage allowed her to grow stronger than any sorceress or mage or arcanist. Sorcerers were legends but their arcane art was so limited. Sages were myths who change the fundamental understandings of magic. If she continued down the path she’d been on, and if the myths of sages were true, she could make a new discipline. She could give herself the abilities of a sorceress or arcanist.

Wait, could she do that now? She could already change spellforms; what was the ability to evolve but a new spell? Could she change them with her sage abilities? She found herself having more and more circular questions which of course had no answers. The girl then realized that she was muttering to herself when Joha and Bjorn were waiting for her explanation.

The embarrassed girl looked up to them. Apparently embarrassment was one of the few emotions she still had while she let the maya take away all of her other negative feelings. The two had been quietly waiting for her to finish her thoughts. 

She explained the prompts to them and her thoughts on what each meant to her. They were all quiet for a moment after she finished speaking. Joha had to process what she’d told him, and he looked conflicted.

“This is good to know,” Joha finally said. “I would refrain from making a decision based on the situation we are in right now. We do not know what the evolution will do to you while it takes place. Bjorn evolved or grew or something when he was inundated with maya, and he was unconscious for days during that process. I can not imagine a fundamental change as unbelievably drastic as removing all of your maya permanently or excising your mana core would be pleasant.”

Bjorn agreed with a deep grumble and nodded his heads.

“It’s just something I wanted to talk to you about. I only have two days to decide,” Tanisha said. 

“That is not very long,” Joha said with a contemplative expression. “Do you also have more points for your level?”

Tanisha gasped; she’d been so worried about the evolution she hadn’t even considered her level. She quickly opened her Unassigned Cultivation menu.

Unassigned Cultivation Points Distribution

You have leveled up 7 time(s) before assigning your UCP.
You have 70 UCP
Please assign all UCP within 12 hour(s) or UCP will be automatically assigned.
Assign [yes/no]

She was surprised she’d leveled up so much. She then realized that she had killed several people and two magic constructs. It didn’t add up, though, so she assumed it was from the familiar bond. Bjorn must have killed several people, too. She didn’t think about it too much; she had points to assign and a plan to enact.

Status Menu

Name: Tanisha Scalebound
Species: Wendigo
Level: 22
Vitality: 16 + 10 = 26
Restoration: 11 + 9 = 20
Constitution: 26 + 20 = 46
Willpower: 19 + 1 = 20
Strength: 18 + 2 = 20
Dexterity: 27 + 8 = 35
Stamina: 18 + 2 = 20
Maya: 10 + 6 = 16
Magic: 28 + 12 = 40
Magic Regeneration: 35 (+100 from bond)
Page 1 of 3

“Okay, I have everything assigned,” Tanisha said. 

“Good. I imagine we will be heading out as soon as the scouts return,” Joha responded. “In the meantime we need to recover as much of the maya as we can.” He motioned Tanisha to sit down. “Follow my breathing technique.”

Joha led a short but intense maya-recovery breathing session that she had never done before. It felt more advanced than any of the standard breathing techniques she’d practiced so far. She could feel the maya move almost like blood throughout her body. She could feel the connection it now had to her core, which was now also the heart of her connection to the Infernal Planes. The maya veins in her body burned. It was painful, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Soon it became a dull ache, then a soothing flow of heat and power. 

The sound of Joha’s instruction faded into the background as she followed the ebb and flow of her maya. Before, maya had felt almost gaseous in her body and she couldn’t control it easily. Now it seemed, for lack of a better word, thicker; almost viscus as it moved along the veins and meridians. 

The maya in her meridians was far easier to control, and she decided to help it flow along and circulate. As she did, over the course of an unknown amount of minutes she found herself back at her core. The chaotic mess of mana that made up the majority was as unruly as ever. The only difference now was that the maya seemed to radiate from it like a never-ceasing flame. She moved on to the small portion of her core that was usable. It was pure mana, controllable and malleable. She was getting ready to exit her core when she noticed something that, if she hadn’t been spending the past few weeks learning magic, she would have missed.

Her mana was odd; it looked as if it was changing into something else. Something totally different from mana or maya. She followed the source of the change and traced it to her bond with Bjorn. It was something her core was picking up from him.

“What is that?” Tanisha asked in a whisper.

She examined it closer with her mind's eye and saw formulae within it. It was broken and incomplete, but definitely not mana or maya. She couldn’t parse the meaning of any of it, although something told her it was a new Higher Plane energy. It was odd to look at, like staring into a broken fractal that was also a math problem mixed with high-elemental script for good measure. There was something missing, and something in the back of her mind told her she could figure it out.

Sage Spell Form Crafter
Magic/Maya cost: Variable
Use mana and maya to alter and twist existing spellforms connected to your core.

She unintentionally activated her Sage Spell Form Crafter, which allowed her to gain further insight into the strange addition to her core. It definitely used to be mana, but it was being altered to such a substantial degree that it wasn’t any more. She had a hard enough time wrapping her head around it when she decided to take a look at her maya. There were codes within the maya as well, but it was complete. And while foreign and strange, it felt familiar because she knew it instinctually. 

She may not have known the theory, but she did know them in practice though the Way of the Rakshasa. The lack of power was the main difference between the maya and new symbols, or maths or whatever they were. Maya had a deep eldritchness to it, magic a wellspring, but this was lacking… 

“A connection!” Tanisha said out loud. “It’s lacking a connection to the higher planes.”

“Tanisha?” Joha questioned. “What are you talking about? Please focus.”

“Sorry. I think I just figured something out.” Tanisha turned to Bjorn. “I don’t know what my core is copying from you Big Man, but I think it’s just missing the connection to the Higher Plane. That’s why it’s all broken up inside.”

Bjorn looked at her meaningfully for a long moment before nodding. Tanisha could feel his emotions shift from confusion to understanding, then shock as he realized what she was talking about. He then walked close to Tanisha and shocked her and Joha by spelling out something in the dirt with a long talon. 

“Aether?” Tanisha questioned, then shook her head as her eyes opened wide. “Wa… wait, you can write? I know I’ve been reading to you, but I didn’t know you could do this.”

“Aether?” Joha said, his voice a low rumble. “What do you know about aether?”

Before Joha could question further, an Isi warrior ran over to them. The man was in a rush so it arrested all other conversation. 

“We are ready to move, the scouts just got back,” the man said in a hurry. “We’re going to the West Gatehouse before it’s reinforced. The patriarch wants to see you two before we head out.”

“Got it,” Tanisha said as she stood up. “Bjorn, you ready?”