“I will grind you to a powder if you eat my stuff again.”

“Just let me eat it! I can remake it, no problem.”

“You…” Felicia noticed that she had been slipping. She really should forgive herself for some mental instability, being randomly dumped inside an unknown forest and all. Instead of being lenient, she checked her phone. The black rectangle sprung to life, telling her the time and date. “Okay. It’s ten minutes before midnight on a Monday evening.” The sun shone brightly through the thick canopy of leaves high above. “Let’s call is Tuesday then, three days to go.” Then Felicia closed her eyes, mentally brought up her mind castle - more of a mind hut now, to be honest - and focused. “Do you have a name.”

“Yes, name?”

“Okay. You name is now Ming.”

“No, I have a name. I’m asking yours.”

The sudden cunning in the otherwise immature voice made her think for a bit. “Fel.”

“Then Fel, I hereby call your true name and command you to obey my orders. Now die.”

“Are you done? Tell me your name right now.”

The crystal in her hands vibrated for a moment. “Agrenxoptictrix.”

“Hello, Agrenxoptrix.” Something changed then. Felicia failed to notice it entirely. “Now give me my clothes back.”

“I can’t.”

“Then why did you tell me you can remake all my stuff again?”

“Because I can remake it.”

“Right. Remake my clothes. Right the fuck now.”

“Yes.”

Picking up the crumpled heap of fabric that suddenly appeared, Felicia nods once. “Thank you.” She then took her time dressing. The suit was a bit worse for wear, the treck through the forest visible in the rips and tears, but it was perfectly clean. Not a single speck of dirt or stain of sweat was visible on any garment. Once again dressed, Felicia already felt better. “Now. We will do an inventory. You will tell me your capabilities, assets of any kind, both physical and social, skills, wants, growth targets, and more. You will tell me all the information you know, starting at the most important and pressing.”

Felicia kept walking around as Agren - she shortened the name and found it pretty cute - talked and talked. She listened to the talking stone, still not sure how its voice was entering her head and strolled through the forest. She had ordered Agren to eat up the plants that were getting in her way, and he agreed without complaining. The stone seemed a lot less luscious and lustrous by the time they reached the wall, though. Agren’s voice got a lot more hurried, his speaking pace increasing as Felicia walked along the perimeter. She idly studied the plants and overall setup of the wall for a bit as she listened to the stones inane chatter.

The first hour or so had been interesting. It had told her its life story. The stone’s life had begun a long time ago. Its earliest memories were of cold water seeping along its form, of a constant need for new power. Then odd instincts stirred, telling it to dig out a hole, to make tunnels and rooms, to take ownership of bacteria, plant, insect, and beast. Only small critters and bugs had come under its control until the shiny man showed up. The man had spoken of many things, but the important things were quite clear. The shiny man had dragged a thin man along with him. The thin man then had started leaking, before stopping any movement. Agren then found it could absorb the thin man, which it did with gusto. Then it knew language. Then it knew of humans.

The shiny man had told him more things, had spoken of danger and veiled threats. Agren then agreed to the shiny man's words, as they had rung true in its non-existent ears. Then it woke up in a small chamber, as promised. A few animals had made their way into the small hut, nothing substantial yet. But Agren wasn't worried. It had been promised a lot of food, a lot of growth. Voice strained, the stone proceeded telling Felicia about the way it felt it should grow, what it felt it should do. Recapping its most intimate and personal wishes and dreams, it told her of all the beings it ever managed to absorb, from largest to smallest.

“The ninety-fifth largest being I ever managed to eat was a long insect. It looks like a stick and makes poison. The ninety-sixth largest being is a beetle that can fly with strong mandibles. This was my first true fighting force, and many other beasts were slain by my beetle legions. The ninety-seventh largest-”

“Thank you, that is enough.”

“NOW GET AWAY FROM THE WALL. IT WILL KILL ME. TAKE ME BACK. AAAAAAA-”

Felicia jumped, nearly dropping the shining gem in her fright. The unstable voice kept wailing at her, begging her to step away from the wall. Felicia looks at the seamless barrier for a little longer, before giving in to the panicked shouting and stepping back into the forest. The frantic core calmed down after she waded through a couple dozen meters of underbrush. “What was that about?”

“The wall. Didn’t you feel it? Don’t go near that wall!”

Felicia looked at the stone in her hand some more. “Right.” Thinking things over for a bit, the beleaguered woman takes stock as she walks back to the small house in the middle of the clearing. She was aching to have something to write her thoughts down on, so she ruffled through her purse. “Why is my purse empty?”

“That stuff was super tasty! Not filling though. I barely got any mana for any of that, just lots of really nice and juicy patterns.”

Staring at the stone in her hand some more, her mind filtered through the information she had collected so far. All the weird things the stone told her, all the odd happenings and weird phenomena, she categorised them all. Her newly formed mind palace grew at a rapid pace, the once small hut gaining new rooms and stairwells as she stored her new findings. She remembered every important line of dialogue by force of imaginary association. By the time the woman had arrived the clearing, she had her thoughts in order and created a neat task list.

“You claim to be able to reproduce whatever you absorb, correct?”

“Yah.” The otherwise annoying voice had been quiet along the walk back to the hut.

“Can you make a mass of the white fluffy stuff you absorbed from my purse, one meter high, two meters wide and long?”

“That will take up all of my mana! No wa-”

“Make it now.”

In the dim light bouncing into the doorway, a large mass of solid white matter sprung into existence. Felicia was stunned by the mental overload for long seconds, alien feeling forcing their way into her mind. She felt something when the stone turned its mana into the solid matter, and the sheer overload of alien sensation sapped the last of her energy. “I meant the cotton swaps. Why did you make it from paper tissue?”

“Because this is the fluffiest stuff I found? And making all those small hairs in the other stuff is difficult.”

Her hand once again squeezed the stone in irritation. Before she could scold the it, however, her exhausted state finally caught up with her. She fell onto the massive block of semi-soft fragrant paper, falling into a deep slumber almost immediately.

She woke an unknown amount of time later, once again stumped at the lack of song to hate, the lack of her usual morning ritual waking her faster than it ever could. Instead of waking in an expensive bed, covered in fabric with an insane thread count, she woke on top of a slab of concrete. Instead of being warmly coddled inside the finest down blankets, she woke cold, shivering, and sticky from cold sweat. The massive wad of paper tissue she had the stone materialize the evening before was compacted into a hard sheet of paper, her sweat and nightly movements efficiently reducing the improvised mattress to a solid block of processed wood.

“Why?”

The voice resounded through her mind, not something she heard with her ears. She chuckled softly, only now realising that she was still clutching the stone in her clammy hands. “What?”

“The thin man stopped moving, and then I could eat him. Why can’t I eat you when you stop moving?”

“Because I’m not dead.”

“What is dead, really? The thin man I ate was the same as moments before, but suddenly he leaked, and I could eat him.”

Ignoring the questions, Felicia stood up and looked around. Her dark and damp surroundings did little to improve her mood. “There was a watch in my purse, so you know what glass is. You will now replace the roof with glass.”

“Can’t.”

“Because?”

“I can’t change the room. The shiny man told me that already.”

“Why not?”

“I can't.”

“Right.” Felicia felt like she was saying that far too much. The single syllable response was a fearsome weapon in her workplace. That single word indicated a rather profound amount of disappointment. She only used it on cases that she had finally given up on, employees that she felt weren’t worth the effort anymore. “Right.” But using it so much had left much of the cathartic judgement and power she felt when saying it sap away.

She shook her head in irritation. She really needed to get a grip, letting the past prevent her from moving forwards was a demon she thought she beat a long time ago. She stood up, her aching back cracking ominously. She noted that she was ravenous and sticky, her drenched clothes sticking to her skinny frame. Some of the fat that had been accumulating on her hips over the past few years had vanished into pastures unknown. Probably her hand, she reasoned. She noted with dull acceptance that the hard facsimile of a bed had vanished while she was stretching. She also couldn’t find her purse or any of its contents.

“Right. We are going to have a nice long talk again, you and I.” She stepped outside, blinking against the bright light coming in from the low hanging sun. “But first, you will have to make me breakfast.”

What followed was a rather arduous process of trial and error. Felicia told Agren to form anything it had previously eaten in a circle around the stone the consciousness seemed to be housed in. From rocks to turtles to insects, every single animal and object could be remade perfectly. Actually, Agren could only remake them perfectly. It had no capacity for modification, only duplication. And it couldn’t remake the human the shiny man had sacrificed. It could only recreate the scraps of clothing and even all the dirt the person had been covered in.

It took Felicia an entire hour to calm the agitated stone down after that ordeal. She had to resort to threatening to crush the stone in her hands in order for Agren to stop ranting and fuming.

In the end, Felicia ate nothing. She decided that not eating anything would be better than getting poisoned by raw meat - neither party had been able to produce a spark - or unknown leaves, roots, and vegetables of questionable origin. Agren suggested that she could eat insects, but Felicia’s disgust made the stone shut up quickly.

“Why are you different?”

Staring at the wide array of familiar and alien wildlife the stone had produced with morbid fascination, Felicia did not expect this question. “How different?”

“You don’t have the extra thing but you do have two larger things…”

Rubbing her face, she answered slowly. “Birds and bees. I’m a woman. The human you… ate before must have been a man.”

“Aah, so that’s what all that was about. The man would have been very interested in you, you know. The guy spent an inordinate amount of time in the pursuit of these female things.” The stone laps into contemplative silence for a moment, setting Felicia’s teeth on edge in the loaded silence. “That guy was sad, but I think I’d rather be sad than someone mean like you. I’m a man now, okay?”

“What?”

Felicia tried reducing the stone to dust once more. She had long since started to suspect that actually cracking the stone would be impossible for her feeble arms and slender fingers. She just thanked all that was holy for the fact that Agren seemed to find any pressure extremely uncomfortable.

When things calmed down again, Felicia decided that she didn't feel that hungry after all. Instead, she sat down and grilled Agren about his capabilities some more. The childish consciousness hemmed and hawed, avoiding the subject for a time. Felicia’s irritation mounted until she realised that the stupid stone simply didn't know himself. Finally having a solid starting point to grasp, the female executive forced the transparent and magical diamond into a thorough set of tests and trials.