PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Two (Patreon)

Arcane essence! A very arcane subject, that’s for sure, pun fully intended without any remorse. It perhaps offers the least benefits to a person’s pneuma out of every type, barely better than raw essence flowing from a spirit without a condensed core. Even null essence pneuma is stronger, faster, and tougher! But where it lacks in pneuma empowerment, it more than makes up for with its anima based spellcraft. Teleportation, levitation, divination, telepathy, technomancy, the sky seems to be the limit when it comes to the power of the arcane essence!

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

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The next morning, Laurel, River, and I all gathered together at the visitor center and awaited our tour guide from the Arkose Preservationists. The tour had filled out a bit more, and while we weren’t at the full ten, we were quickly joined by a handful of other people. An older, slightly portly gentleman and a gray haired, short older woman joined us. They introduced themselves as we waited. 

“My name is Isabella,” the woman said, extending a hand. “And this is my husband, Alberton.” 

After introducing ourselves, I gave them a once over. Neither one of them had any storage gems hanging from their bag or belt, nor did either have the glowing colorful eyes that indicated that they had awakened their essence. That could potentially have been explained by contacts – some people didn’t like the glowing effect – but neither one radiated the essence that I would associate with even a level one. I supposed that they could have been veiling their power, but that was starting to get to the point of going through an awful lot of work to hide power, when they were going on a tamer tour anyways. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing on the tamer focused tour?” I asked, trying to keep my tone polite. “Are you all looking to become tamers?” 

“Oh no, dear, far from it,” Isabella laughed, slipping her bag off her shoulder and removing a sketchpad. She flipped it open to reveal an elaborate charcoal sketch of a six-legged Primal that somewhat resembled a lizard. It was set amongst a jungle scene, and the Primal was closely studying a flower with drooping petals.

“You could say that we’re simply enthusiasts and explorers,” Alberton explained. “My wife likes to sketch things in their native environments, and she’s possessed of a particular fascination with Primals. I’m more interested in essence beasts and enhanced flora, personally.” 

“This old man can’t help but still try and theorize about his work, even when he’s half a decade into his retirement,” Isabella joked, lightly elbowing her husband in the ribs. 

“Hah! It’s true, I confess,” Alberton said, and hastened to explain when I asked what she meant about his prior job. “I used to work as a biologist on ousia mapping.” 

“Isn’t ousia already pretty well mapped?” Laurel asked, only for Alberton to laugh. The man came across far too jolly for it to seem mocking, and if anything, he seemed to appreciate the question. 

“Hardly half as well as we’d hope,” he explained. “We can identify fundamental patterns across the ousia weaves of humans in conjunction with things like the muscular and skeletal systems, but mapping the nervous system is an entirely different matter. And that doesn’t even touch on the world of the microbiologist. Indeed, even when studying the macro systems, there’s a lot of work to be done, as each weave is somewhat different, and our pattern recognition abilities are ever-growing. I–” 

Before he could continue on with his story, Isabella coughed politely, and the older man gave us a smile and waved his hand. 

“Oh, well, look at me, rambling on. My apologies.”

We all reassured him that it was not a problem, that it had been interesting, and River spoke up, bringing up some of his own research into ousia re-mapping using the spiderweb principle, in order to help improve the flow of his anima for spellcraft. That got the two chatting about the topic, and on some of the analogous parts of the ousia to major parts of the body like the arteries. I was just beginning to look around for our tour guide when I felt a pair of fluctuations in the ambient essence. The first was normal enough, though quite powerful, a wood element magian whose core seemed to have somewhere around fifty layers. The second presence, however, was deeply abnormal. It felt like a human possessed of a core, and like a mass of raw essence at the same time. 

I let out a soft groan and turned to see Gawain and a woman I didn’t recognize approaching. The woman was in her thirties, had short cropped brown hair tucked under a forest green beret, glowing green eyes a few shades darker than Laurel’s, and wore a massive, mud-stained backpack over her back. Gawain was dressed in nice but simple clothes well suited for a walk in the woods, had tied his hair into a ponytail, and had Gryphon perched on his left shoulder. Before I could say anything at all, the woman, who had to be our guide, spoke up.

“Ah, great, you’re all here. Right, good to meet ya. My name’s Gabby, and I’m going to be your guide for this trip! For those of you who’ve never been to Arkose before, welcome, and for those of you who have, welcome back! You picked a great time to come, the fall is a beautiful time over here. Now before we head out, I just have to run through the checklist! Before that, let’s go around and introduce ourselves, then tell everyone else one fun fact about each of us. I’ll start – my name’s Gabby, and I’ve been working with Arkose since I was sixteen!” 

We went around in a rough circle, after which Gabby ran through various things on her checklist: checking if we had any allergies, needed certain accommodations, and if our supplies were adequate for the rather large amount of walking and camping we would be doing over the next several days. After all that was finished up, she left us with a warning bit of advice. 

“We’re going through some rockier, wild areas, far from the paved trails. It can be easy to accidentally stray from the group. In the event you get lost, however, stay where you are!” 

“I thought the common advice was to follow water downstream and get back to civilization,” River asked. 

“Do not do that!” Gabby stressed. “There are regions of the world where that advice might hold, but these mountains are old, covered in dense foliage, and riddled with a thousand creeks that never catch up with civilization. Everything’s got a range, be it tracker dogs, divination spells, or good old fashioned shouting. If you keep moving after getting lost, you risk leaving those ranges, and the odds of finding you plummet. When we get to the free roaming area, you should only stray away from me if you’re absolutely confident in your abilities to navigate.” 

She clapped and smiled at all of us, then turned and gestured to a small bus that had been parked in the lot since we arrived. It was battered, old, and had doubtless had its core restructured at least a dozen times.

“Now, we’re going to be taking the bus out to the border of Arkose’s paved trails, and from there, we’re taking the blue square trail. Alright, let’s go!” 

We all shuffled onto the bus, taking our seats: Isabella and Alberton, River and Laurel, leaving Gawain to take a seat to himself, and me to have the other empty bench, across from Laurel. As the bus rumbled along the paved trails, I watched the stones rolling by in the windows, the swirling colors of autumn in the trees, and the gentle mist that coiled off the trees and ground this early in the morning. 

We were stopped at one point by a group of elk along the path, and I took in a sharp breath as I saw them in real life for the first time. The thing that surprised me at first was the size. I’d somewhat expected them to be about the size of a deer, but they were much bigger, and significantly broader. Their fur was a tawny gray-brown color, and the antlers on the leader of the pack looked less like delicate deer antlers than they did like spears or sharpened branches. 

“Those antlers can easily get over fifty pounds, and they’re an important part of the ecosystem when it comes to returning minerals to the soil,” Gabby commented as we stopped. “That’s why it’s illegal to collect shed antlers from the ground.” 

I leaned forward and pulled out my augpad, pressing it against the window and angling best I could to get a decent shot of the male elk with his massive antlers. There wasn’t a local network out here, and I didn’t feel like trying to boost my pad to connect to the global net, so I didn’t upload it for Lisa Ruth. Maybe I would tonight, if I had enough anima left. 

Eventually the herd of elk moved on, and we continued along our way. As we moved, Laurel leaned across the aisle and whispered to me. 

“The guy you were staring at. That’s Gawain, isn’t it? I thought I recognized him from the short video you posted.”

“It is. I just don’t know what he’s doing here! There are plenty of other Councilors out there. What are the–” I said, before trailing off for a moment and groaning. “It was Cruz.”

“Huh?” 

“Cruz was reaching out to Lisa Ruth because of me, and I bet that’s why he's here. He got suggested that he go out this way. Or, knowing that he’s as optics obsessed as he is, maybe he decided to follow me to film a follow up to the video after our first Councillor fight after our second.” 

“Are you sure it’s optics he’s obsessed with, if he really came all the way out here for that?” Laurel asked, a taunting grin on her face. I glared at her and rolled my eyes. 

“Don’t even joke about that. He’s awful. Besides, I don’t need his help to be a top tamer, I’ll make it there on my own, thank you very much.” 

“I never said anything about you needing his help,” Laurel pointed out. 

“Good. Because I don’t need it.” 

Laurel grew a touch serious at that and nodded. 

“I get that. I’m not saying you do need him. But I am saying that if he really decided to follow you out here to record a second video? And hey, what’s up with his essence? It feels… strange.”

“I’m not sure. Implants, maybe?”

She shrugged, and after a few moments of silence we each pulled away, and I went back to looking out the window again until Gabby stopped the bus and we all met outside. We ran through a handful of additional warnings – keep food in bear resistant containers, don’t antagonize Primals, stay away from most of the wildlife, all that good stuff – before we started down the trail. 

The morning air was crisp enough that I was glad for my new gray and yellow hoodie, and the reddish clay of the earth beneath our feet was slick enough to make me glad that I’d invested in high quality boots. As the day wore on, it began to get warmer, so I took off the hoodie and stowed it in my bag.

As we walked, Gabby stopped every once in a while to point things out: a tree large enough that it had likely been from the pre-arrival period, bright golden flowers that bloomed in the autumn which caused Gawain to sneeze, a half-dozen small waterfalls, and one towering waterfall that was over a hundred feet high. Gabby made an excellent guide, talking about the history of the plant, how it interacted with the ecosystem, and what unique properties that the plant had, if it had any. I had the plants filled out rapidly, and also snagged a picture of a flock of kirows and wild turkeys. 

“Now, we’re coming up on a bear,” Gabby said, her voice calm as she pointed out in the woods. I jerked as I spotted it, a massive form that came up to my shoulder despite being on all forms, with dark fur. “Don’t try to be quiet. The last thing you wanna do is scare it. Just keep talking and walking, and it’ll probably leave us alone. If not, I’ll use one of my spells.” 

As we walked past, keeping our pace steady and chatting, the bear swung its snout around to watch us, before it went back to digging in the earth – looking for grubs and buried acorns, according to Gabby. As we were leaving its territory, I snagged a picture, and we kept walking, until we had reached our campsite for the night.