Felicia woke, feeling great. She planned on laying in her bed for a few more minutes - a luxury by her standards - when her irritation at the scratching noise coming from her door exceeded her desire to remain between warm blankets. She stood up and was about to take a short shower when she realized she could absorb the filth from her own body now. She willed it to so and was naked a fraction of a second later. The very clothes ripped from her body in her enthusiasm at the skills she had suddenly gained. Walking over to the closet, she wondered why her head felt cold. She then saw that she had accidentally dematerialised each and every single hair on her body. Felicia flipped at this realisation. She stormed towards the door, kicking it open with bare feet. She ignored the pain shooting up her leg and scanned the small room for the source of her irritation. The green badger had just recovered from being smacked into a wall when it was beaten up mercilessly. Felicia kicked it around the room, screaming like a madwoman while doing so.

She stopped a full minute later, suddenly ashamed of what she had been doing. The badger was black and blue at this point, a twitching heap of pale green fur. It struggled upright and painfully waddled over to where Felicia was catching her breath. It could only use its forelegs, it seemed. Felicia was starting to feel sorry for the beaten up animal when it reached her. The badger raised its head, looking into her eyes with the slightest spark of intelligence. Then it chomped down on her foot and started gnawing on her toes. Its needle-like teeth poked holes in the sensitive skin on top of her big toe, and she felt its narrow tongue lap at the small bleeding wounds.

Felicia had to admire the tenacity of the annoying shit after she once again kicked the ever living daylights out of the thing. Its spine was definitively broken, along with one of its forefeet, but still, it kept trying to reach her. She was thankful for the annoying animal, though. It gave her a welcome distraction to what she knew had to be done. She picked the twitching heap of bruises up by the scruff of its neck and threw it up the stairs. The beast hit its head on the highest tray, and Felicia saw it spin away into the forest, a warbling and pathetic gurgling coming from its mouth. Dusting off her hands, she realised she felt hungry. Not a physical hunger though, no. Felicia felt hungry for mana. There was a veritable gaping hole in her chest that no form of physical food could satisfy, and Felicia knew where to find plenty of sustenance. It might be slightly past the expiration date, but she didn’t taste anything she dematerialised anyway. Before setting out on her dead animal absorbing adventure, she got dressed first. Her closet still contained a few sets of the same clothes she had been wearing for weeks now. She donned clothes and looked immaculate a mere half an hour later as she stood before the closed up entrance to the underground farm.

She breathed out brusquely and gulped in a large lungful of air. She then waved a hand, making the stone slab sealing up the entrance to the farm crumble into sand. The wave of rotting air was almost visible as it wafted towards Felicia. She immediately started willing the breeze to vanish, the breeze that sprung up from behind her a reassuring feeling. She walked into the bowels of her previously bustling farm and started willing the decomposing heaps to disappear. It didn’t take long before the lights in her chest started grinding through her bones and flesh in a painful manner again, but Felicia knew what to do this time. She plucked a grain-sized light from her chest and willed a male mouse into existence around it.

“Huw wehim me,” she said. Neither the mouse nor Felicia herself understood the troubled syllables that came from her mouth, but the small grey critter faithfully followed after her nonetheless. She turned another grain of light into a female mouse, telling it to follow behind her also. The two animals sniffed each other shortly, but neither showed interest in anything else besides meekly following behind Felicia. The businesswoman strode from floor to floor, sending her will through each battery cage and every single paddock. Every time she felt the seeds grind through her body painfully, she turned sparks into animals until she felt faint of heart. This went on for hours as she cleared each space. She had been slightly curious about the state of the dead animals when she first entered the area, but she could only see so many maggot infested heaps before she resolutely started staring at the floor. She only looked up when she felt that all the dead beings had vanished into mana. She did contemplate this entire process a few times but decided that it wasn't worth throwing up over. She looked around and nearly barfed at the thought that all that rotting meat was now in a stone inside her neck.

She took a deep breath and turned around, staring at the small entourage of animals that was still following her. The difference between the badger she had freed and these seeded animals was as clear as day. She felt connected to these beings on a deep level like they were made from a part of her body that just happened to be separated from herself. The badger had stopped feeling this way the moment the last fragment of seed had vanished. It was more proof of the need for her to suffer through a lot more anguish. Felicia refused to think about it. Instead, she walked up the stairs and impatiently waited for the small animals to follow. The fact that each step was five time the height of the smallest critter was not an excuse in her eyes. She glared at the group of animals until some of them went back down the stairs and brought everyone up.

Felicia then sat down and started releasing them one by one. She thanked all that was holy and good that none had been as bad as the first badger when she finished, many hours later. The pain she had to go through each time she consciously crushed a shining part of her own spirit into powder had sapped her of all strength, both mental and physical. Another massive source of irritation had been the badger. Somehow, the bloody and beaten animal had recovered its mobility. It still looked horrible, its skin black and blue, its bruises even visible through its thick fur. But it could walk again. It had rushed Felicia when she was halfway through releasing the first mouse, and it had caught her unaware. She only noticed it when the animal’s tugging caused her to lose balance. Only then had she seen that the beast had been chewing on her ankle for a while. She had lashed out at the creature, almost thankful for a target to vent her pain and frustration on. Once again, the green badger hadn’t known the meaning of the word giving up and had returned time and time again. Felicia had sent it flying with a wide variety of kicks, throws and punches each time. She used the pain caused by crushing her lights to inflict violence upon the insistent beast. This had turned a physically easy job into something rather high intensity, though. So Felicia decided that she had done enough for today - despite the fact that the sun wasn’t even halfway done with its treck across the sky - and went to bed.

She woke up, the sound of scratching claws interrupting some dream she had. The warm and abstract feelings that had let her belief that all was right and well with the world vanishing the moment memories crashed back into her mind’s eye.

There exists a thin line between a healthy amount of retrospective analysis and paralysis through looking back. Felicia felt like she was at this brink. The edge between losing herself in how things should be and how things could be was calling her. Instead of listening to any of that, she stood up and went about her day. She had gone to bed exhausted, the only important question in her mind had been the massive conundrum of how she could get out of this place. The last thought she had had before laying down her head on the soft pillow was the question of what she should do from now on. This was a strategy that she had developed through a lot of trial and error. Complicated issues that seemed impossible to solve usually only needed a good night of focused sleep to get to the bottom of. Sleep is nature’s way of handling the massive amounts of data that humans absorb on a day to day basis, after all. The very concept of REM sleep was this horribly fascinating way in which the human mind processed and transferred memories. Felicia had read a lot of research about this phenomenon. She had willingly trawled through many dry scientific papers to grasp this vital tidbit of information about the human psyche.

A rather condensed summary of this information flashed through her mind when she went about her morning routine. At the very least, Felicia was looking for a reason. She tried to rationalize the first thought she had had upon waking this morning. How else could she explain the steadfast and assured thought inside her mind that she needed to make a modern battle tank?