The Gentle Beast

“Water Bullet”

Passive

Grants the ability to speak and understand Common.

Completion

Grants a permanent increase to Mana capacity. Locked after completion.

◆ The Star of Rainwater

◆ The Archer’s Star

◆ The Bursting Star

◆ [Empty]

◆ [Empty]

◆ [Empty]

Grae had tried adding the Star of Vital Strength. It changed the ability somehow, made it slower and more powerful. The resulting bullet was compact, barely the size of Grae’s fingernail, but each time he used this new ability he felt…

Exhausted.

Something was drained from him with each use, he discovered. When he tried to conjure too many bullets at once, there was a horrible feeling, as if he was empty from the inside out. A hollow husk of a Grae.

Adding more stars meant the ability drained him faster, and the Star of Vital Strength was the worst one.

When he tried to add the Shieldbearer’s Star, the result was a wave of water. It was much weaker than the concentrated bullet…

But if he added everything at once, the power of Vital Strength compensated for that. With a single massive push, Grae was able to summon a wall of water that towered above him. It swept outwards from his hand and crashed into the walls with thunderous force.

And after casting that…

Grae had to sit on the ground for a while, feeling his head throb and his whole body ache. He’d tried to push too hard…

The effect was incredible, but it was too much. Too much for poor Grae’s aching head.

As he lay there, red sparks danced among his fur, his eyes widened…

Red.

Grae had seen the word. red in his description. His Level was Red. These sparks…

If these sparks were motes, then the numbers on each star were the cost. Red sparks within his body, fueling the powers of the stars. Yes. That made sense.

Experimentally, Grae tried to find the sparks within him and move them without using the Rainwater Star again. They responded to his will. He managed to shift them up from his heart through his arm, and back, drawing them through his skin and flesh. It felt like electricity wandering through his body.

He pushed a few into the palm of his hand, where they danced like fireflies.

“What aaaare you?” He grunted out, enchanted.

But in the open air they only lasted seconds.

Watching them fade, Grae began to consider.

The sparks were energy. Fuel for the abilities the Stars gave him. The Stars listed their sources when he inspected them; Stars of Form came from someplace called the Heavens, while Stars of Function were ‘formed’ by mortal endeavors.

All of these Stars had been made by humans…

But Grae wondered if he could make his own.

That left the Constellations. Where did Constellations come from? Where did the delightful little screens come from? They felt like messages, but who was sending them? These were the questions Grae wanted answers for.

Grae suspected that they shared a source. The little screens had given him the Constellations; they seemed to treat them like a gift in exchange for his achievements.

He wrinkled his nose in sad laughter. His ‘achievements’...

Wasting his life in this squalid little pit, until somehow he was the last living thing of his generation.

With a groan he rose up. Putting all five stars in one Constellation had been a mistake. Plucking them out again, he left the three to form ‘Water Bullet’ in place…

And put the other two into the Open Eyes Constellation.

The Open Eyes

“Barkskin”

Passive

Grants the ability to use Inspect.

Completion

None. Does not lock.

◆ The Star of Vital Strength

◆ The Shieldbearer’s Star

A second force bloomed in his chest. When he pushed against this one, the sparks of red energy were sucked deep into his body, and his skin began to change. It hardened, becoming thick and wrinkled like a loose coat of leather.

He found he couldn’t feel a thing.

It had turned his hide into armor. The effect lingered for ten breaths, in and out, before fading away again with an odd rippling sensation that passed over his skin as it transformed back.

The Open Eyes only had two slots, though. It could never create an ability as powerful as the wall of water.

Which made him wonder…

The talent given only after a hundred years, it had to be rare and special, yes? A thing only a few would ever possess. So then…

How many Constellations gave six full slots?

So many questions.

He looked over his screens a final time and came to a conclusion. Underneath his race, Tuskling, was a field marked ‘Capacity’. It had two numbers, one of which stayed the same and the other which had dropped to nearly zero over the course of his experiments.

To prove what he suspected, Grae drew sparks from his hand, sending them out into the air to dance like fireflies. The first number dropped lower and lower.

Meanwhile, the Gentle Beast Constellation offered a ‘Completion’ bonus. Grae guessed that must be for filling in all the Stars…

But that field mentioned ‘Mana’ Capacity.

Mana. The fuel that fed the stars. The numbers were the individual sparks, which must be Motes; each Star added a cost of roughly ten Motes to using his Constellations.

Grae’s tongue ran along his rough, yellowed teeth. Yes. This was the joy of intellect; piecing together the puzzle of the world. Before, these words would have meant nothing. It wouldn’t have even occurred to him to try and decipher their meanings, to arrange and rearrange them searching for patterns…

Intellect had been a curse that struck Grae and broke his old life to pieces. But it had made the world richer, full of meaning that had been kept secret from his former dull self; with his new eyes he could finally see.

Finding a shard of armor and polishing it with a cloth, Grae made himself a small but effective mirror. It would serve to let him Inspect himself and access his Constellations when there was no water nearby.

Tucking away this tool, he sighed.

It was time.

He had one final visit to make, and then he would depart, leaving behind his home of a hundred years.