After so many years of observation, it was time to put theory into action.

If I could reach the source of that strange Ether pulse, I was sure there was enough Ether to achieve flight and escape this place. The only problem was, to put it lightly, absolutely everything between me and that source.

Almost every animal here had a way of dealing with me, and I saw glimpses of the monstrous Ether Tortoises and elephants that inhabited the inner rings of the cavern. There was no way I could deal with those monsters — in a strange place like this, the herbivores became my greatest enemy.

I don’t know how such an environment developed so far underground, but I had little interest in the semantics of such a region.

What I needed was a reliable way to dispose of anything I came across.

There was no getting around it: I was weak. Though I hoped I could do cool things like summoning a tornado or wielding air blasts, I couldn’t even come close to that.

Considering my lack of progression, figuring out my slide technique was a miracle in and of itself. But I wondered if I could use it for anything else.

In a situation like this, versatility was key. The more uses for a single ability, the better.

I tried picking up a flat rock and bursting him along with me. Turns out controlling two was pretty easy, so I tried another. And another.

I could propel five objects along with me, but I couldn’t keep my concentration in a tense situation. I tried to use various objects as projectiles with the same technique, but aiming them was another matter entirely. The best option with my undeveloped ability was to get lucky with a wild toss and chunk a monster’s skull.

That was the extent of my power. I did get a few lucky chunks once in a while, but I had to continue living as a scavenger. If you could call an existence like this living, even.

Time continued to pass. I refined what little skill I had and focused on staying alive.

Unlike the creatures here, I was functionally immortal. My only blessing was that I didn’t have to hunt for food or take care of a body; I lay in wait for days, maybe weeks for prime opportunities to add to my reservoir.

It was all for the sake of moving forward. Isolation only bothers those who have time to relax their minds, and my eyes were focused solely on the world around me. There was no room for grand introspections or monologues — I had to keep moving forward.

It’s amazing what the human mind can do when confronted with the reality of survival. You can justify anything for the sake of living another day.

The hope of a better tomorrow. It’s a universal hope that sustains the downtrodden in any era, the prisoners of war and those trapped in the greatest horrors the world could possibly unleash. Everybody wishes that tomorrow is better than today.

More often than not, tomorrow is not better than today. Every tomorrow brings more pain, more trials and tribulations to grind on the soul.

Everybody has their breaking point. Some may have more resilience to certain types of torture than others; I wondered how many people made it to the fabled land of a happy tomorrow without completely breaking down.

After all, how many popular stories gave happy endings? Even tragedies have a lesson, some catharsis at the end of all things. Accepted stories have a point, a meaning to be gained from the trials endured or failed.

The problem with good stories is that they’re biased. Those who meet their end in the most miserable of ways do so in silence — nobody wants to hear the worst stories, the tales of ceaseless agony and meaningless terror. But they exist.

Most people instinctively stay away from those kinds of stories. They don’t help the mind in any way or form, unless you’re one of those people who enjoy meaningless noise.

It only takes one to inspire the masses with a dream. Yet how many individuals in that great sea of minds can actually reach that dream?

How many drown in silence?

I suppose I was one of the lucky ones. All I had to do was keep gathering Ether until something changed, completely disconnected from the world at large. I wasn’t really a part of this world; I was merely an existential leech that grew by the day.

And one particular day, the world I tried so hard to ignore granted me a single mercy.

As I was practicing my slide, mostly seeing how fast I could outrun potential predators, and came across two Ether Tortoises locked in some sort of mating duel. I went out of my way to avoid them due to prior trauma, but a curious cloud of thin Ether encased these two. I had to investigate.

They were slow-moving reptiles. Would they butt heads until one of them fell over? I gave them a moment of my time, wondering how they would make fools of themselves.

That wasn’t what happened.

What I witnessed was a display of pure centrifugal force.

The growths on their shells and tail were burning Ether, glowing a bright blue as they accelerated far beyond what they should’ve been capable of. Instead of moving forward, they spun into their attacks.

Each tail strike resonated through the cavern like a thunderclap.

They were perfectly matched. By placing Ether in the environment, they turned themselves into destructive tornadoes, augmenting and sabotaging momentum as they rammed into one another.

It was the same principle as a pitcher using their entire body to throw a ball, except this time, it was turtles who smashed through stone walls with the force of their strikes.

So this was the power of natural design, huh?

Not bad, not bad at all.

They put their all into a final strike. The smaller one, the one with a single horn growing out of its forehead, was a moment quicker. He reached peak velocity first and shattered the other’s tail club, sending blue sparks through the air.

And that was that.

The Ether Tortoises nodded to one another, a mutual acceptance of the results. The loser accepted his loss and waddled away. The winner strode forward, seeking to consume the Ether-rich remnants of the loser’s club.

He would’ve had a nice meal, if it weren’t for me.

I accelerated into the aftermath and snatched up the two largest tortoise club chunks, cackling as I made the speediest getaway this side of the underground.

Only one of the chunks I stole had a reaction to Ether. The other was a complete dud.

Still, I couldn’t be upset. The knowledge alone was more than worth it; the moment I found a private perch, I tried using the Ether Tortoise’s technique while the battle was fresh in my mind.

It was the technique I was missing.

When I released a small glob into the air and shot my wind song at it, the wind’s velocity practically doubled.

This was direct manipulation of air pressure. If I could time the exact shift and position of wind, rather than just blowing really hard in a certain area, the possibilities were actually endless.

As long as I didn’t run out of Ether, I could fine-tune projectiles. I could launch wind shifts in areas and at angles nobody could expect. If I saturated the entire area in Ether like those tortoises did, I might be able to achieve something close to telekinesis.

My pathological fear of shelled creatures stopped me from learning such a nifty trick for so long, but that didn’t bother me. I was moving forward. A victory dance wasn’t possible, but I settled for putting both trophies on my head and doing a victory lap slide.

The functioning tortoise stone, which I affectionately named Stony Tony, converted Ether directly into pure momentum.

Talk about a blatant violation of thermodynamics. This world had no respect for common sense.

Tony followed any Ether paths I laid out for him. When I charged him up and directed him into a wall, he made a massive dent in solid stone with minimal damage to himself.

Tony surpassed my expectations. That was enough for me.

Good to meet you, partner. Let’s put ourselves to the grindstone and break outta this rocky prison.

There were only so many days until the next pulse cycle. As easy as an escape was, I elected to keep practicing with what I had. Who knows what kinds of threats awaited me up there; if I could reach the source of all that delicious Ether, my powers may grow even further. I wanted to be capable of flight without Tony, in case it came to that.

It was time to train and practice, to really put those lessons to good use. And with a second, equally hard stone at my disposal, I had a few ideas for a makeover.

Ta-da. I did it.

I took a bath. Are you proud of me yet?

By burning Ether to create a mild air-based water jet, I really scrubbed all the dirt and grime out. The layers of dried blood and other substances I’d rather not think about were really starting to accumulate, so I had to clean myself up at some point.

Admittedly, I never paid much attention to my form. I was always aware of my shape for my air slide technique, but not once had I ever really looked at myself. There was no purpose in the action. But now that I went through all the work of cleaning and making myself presentable, I wanted to admire my handiwork.

When I turned my senses on my physical traits, I was met with a wide oval of dark rock flecked with striped bands of white crystal. A few strips of crystal had transmuted into an ominous, gleaming red gem-like substance, which would’ve made it close to a nice block of gneiss.

But it wasn’t very cute, was it?

Red was not a very friendly colour. If there happened to be somebody waiting on the surface for me, wouldn’t they freak out if they saw me? If a sliding red crystal rock approached me in the darkness, I’d be suitably freaked out.

Wait. If I approached civilization like this, wouldn’t all of humanity be freaked out as well?

I could already imagine the scenarios: a mysterious rock of mass destruction shows up at the border, guards fire upon sight; mysterious rock taken into custody, taken apart for further research; mysterious rock declared precious artifact and left in a cold and lonely vault; mysterious rock thrown into a volcano as a sacrifice for elder gods.

To avoid those kinds of fates, I had to think of a way to market myself. I didn’t know if I actually had telepathic ability; Samson managed to contact me telepathically, but that doesn’t mean I could talk with others.

What if I got rock-nabbed by people I couldn’t fight against? I was a real person with rights and volition despite my appearance, and I had the intellect to prove it. I could regurgitate all sorts of useless trivia about the world, most of which had already been outdated or contradicted by the existence of Soul and Ether. But even then, I could pass those theories off as some sort of science-fiction story, right? Maybe I could get a job as a living muse.

That sounded nice. A life of sitting on a fluffy pillow and looking pretty — wouldn’t that be the perfect award for a hardworking person like me? But wait, what if the artist got tired of me? Artists are always strange folks — the artist I was working with might throw me in the trash one day in a fit of rage. Then I’d end up in a trash compactor or in a landfill somewhere. That would be terrible!

The future was scary. I looked over at my good companion Stony Tony and asked a question:

This world really is scary… but at least you’re with me, Tony. Right, Tony? You won’t leave me or anything, will you?

Stony Tony, reliable as a boulder, nodded to reassure me. That made me happy.

Stony Tony nodded because I was pushing him back and forth.

—I was seriously starting to lose it.

I was going insane. I was seriously, seriously, going insane.

Shamefully, I dragged Tony with me to another training session of working on my wind control and flinging him around.

I needed to get out of here as fast as possible, before I really lost it.

The next Ether cycle was upon me. Once again, a fresh gush of Ether from the cavern’s heart sent the inhabitants of the jungle into a vicious bloodlust.

My Ether limit was around 2.2 EX now, which provided negligible benefits to my wind. But I had plenty of Ether to work with — I wouldn’t need to recuperate if I got into a prolonged engagement.

When this round’s bloodshed was over, I got to work.

Though there were some funky elements and substances I had yet to identify, I was confident that all creatures still relied on good ol’ oxygen to cycle nutrients through their blood. Even if they instinctively used Ether to speed up their body’s healing, they couldn’t heal if they were dead.

While most animals were resting with their spoils of battle, I sat from afar and decided to experiment on a nesting jaguar. It was perched on a small mossy cliff-face, well hidden from any would-be predators.

But it couldn’t hide from me.

He was a strong creature, judging by his Ether. But I was a rock on a mission, damn the consequences.

These creatures offered no insight into creative Ether usage. They were an ambush predator like me, somebody who relied on speed, force, and ingenuity to hunt.

Every cycle, these apex predators racked up the most kills. When they were burnt Ether to augment their bodies, they moved at incomprehensible speeds and tore out the necks of creatures quadruple their size.

Sorry buddy, but you were too dangerous. I was sowing the seeds for the future, for something far greater than the simple perpetuation of life.

I parked myself on a nearby ledge and slowly suffused the nearby area with Ether.

The jaguar didn’t notice my preparation. Good.

Asphyxiation is too slow. Sucking the air out of a creature’s lungs may be stylish and horrifying, but I wasn’t here to make a statement.

And so, I did the exact opposite — I activated my wind song and crammed as much air as possible into its body from every angle.

Mouth. Nose. Ears. Anus. Genitalia. Eyes. I attacked all possible targets at once.

Within ten seconds, the jaguar died. I poked my rocky head over the cliff to confirm the results I had felt through my Ether. Maybe that was a bit too much—

Oh, God. That was too much. That was way too much.

...Was I a bad person?

That was a lot of Ether I absorbed, but the sight overwhelmed me.

Maybe if I gave it some Ether back… No, no, it was definitely dead. Deadity-dead-dead.

Shit.

I mean, they were dead, right? Does the method of murder really matter? Would it have been any different if I sent Tony to crack their skull? I tried to rationalize and argue against myself, but the sheer brutality of such a technique punched a clean hole through my reasoning.

I intended to clean up the populace while they were weak and recovering, but this was dirty. Yet these same animals would kill me if they had the chance — they were animals, not humans I could reason with.

I knew what I wanted: I wished for the power of the cavern’s heart, but I didn’t want to leave a pile of corpses in my wake.

There was some mental block holding me back from going on an animal genocide. This was probably a good thing in terms of keeping my sanity, but it bothered me. The more I looked into my mind, the less I understood why I had such reservations.

Where do preferences come from? Why was I the way I was? I had all this scientific knowledge and the song of the wind, which were the two things that allowed me to survive in this place, but I still couldn’t remember who I was.

It would be too easy to blame all my problems on that strange woman. I had already made steps to reject her influence on me, should she appear again. Hating her too much would have the opposite effect on my psyche; it would be an obsession. She didn’t deserve my thought.

I was my own person, after all. Making decisions based on somebody I never met was the peak of foolishness.

That was precisely why I was so conflicted. I didn’t know if my hesitance to kill en masse was the result of her meddling, or some part of my will that I hadn’t quite uncovered yet.

I had to think of a reason. There had to be another way...

Think… think…

Oh. I discovered another way out.

It was so simple that I had simply never thought about it.

This was the concept humanity used to shield their minds from their genesis. It was a concept some humans lived their entire lives by, and something I just considered.

Self-defense.

To retaliate when attacked. You were only defending yourself from an enemy, so you couldn’t be blamed.

All doubts in my mind disappeared. With two simple words, my endless journey of self-reflection and moral quandary had come to a peaceful end.

If something attacked me, I was entirely morally justified in due kind. And since everything here was trying to kill me, I didn’t have to feel bad about killing in turn.

I was ecstatic. This was the name of my new religion. This was how I could live without regrets.

Self-defense. Self-defense. Self-defense. I needed no further justification for my actions other than self-defense.

If I wanted to grow stronger, I had to follow the rules of this world.

I wasn’t fighting for something as crude as survival, a concept that could later backfire catastrophically. I was simply defending myself from ne'er-do-well who had come to take my hard-earned Ether. If they got killed by attacking me, well, that was entirely their own fault.

It really was that simple. I don’t know how I overlooked such a simple idea for so long, but better late than never.

Was this how philosophers felt when they came upon a new way of thinking? If so, I might need to add philosopher to my list of professions. Who would want to listen to a crusty old guy talking about ideas when you could listen to a rock?

It was all coming together now. I had a weapon, techniques, and the ideological advantage required to move forward. I was pretty much unstoppable, really. At least, against mindless animals. But a victory was a victory — I wasn’t going to diminish myself after what I had been through.

When I finished celebrating my new enlightenment, I grabbed Tony and went on my way. It was time to explore the inner rings of this cavern.

What a relaxing walk. This was my first real adventure!

Flowers were no longer a rare occurrence in the inner caverns. There were small rivers and pools of water, and the occasional swamp; I brushed by enough bioluminescence that I almost forgot I was deep underground. Almost.

The additional terrain greatly diminished my ability to slide freely, but I actually found it quite fun. It was a change in scenery, and to me, it was like switching levels in a racing game I had completely mastered.

...Video games, huh?

I had a distinct entry in my mind’s library about those damned things. I didn’t have any memories of playing them, but I knew of their existence and the types of games that existed.

What I wouldn’t do to kick back with a nice story and some mindless button mashing. This air racing came close, but it wasn’t the same.

As for threats to my existence, I no longer had to worry. For example, just then:

Oh look, a rock-eating snake had come to gobble me up. Oh look, I was trapped in some vines I crashed into while I was paying attention to him.

Oh look, he entered my perpetual Ether cloud.

Bam. Self-defense.

More Ether for my limiter, no guilt for my mind, and a coarse snake tartare for any hungry carnivores.

The principle of self-defense allowed me to do some good for the environment. Everybody wins. Wasn’t that great?

I was getting pretty good with Stony Tony, too. As long as the air was thick with Ether, I could swing him around in lethal figure eights, reaching speeds that were close to an arrow. He helped me finish off any creatures that tried to resist my initial self-defense clause.

The difficulty spike here was negligible. With the power of tools, I could relax and take it real easy.

I was the quintessential human, a creature that could create tools to kill. At long last, I was in a great mood.

Nice vistas of an underground jungle, a new race track for me to practice on, and liberal applications of self-defense. It was truly a dream come true.

During my journey, as I was engaging in increasing amounts of self-defense, I realized why revenge stories were so popular.

Revenge movies. Revenge video games. A life of revenge. It was a theme that saturated a civilization I could no longer remember, but I was confident that it was a universal human condition.

Animals may seek revenge when wronged, but humans are the only ones to indulge in it. They enjoy hearing about it. They enjoy the neural stimulation that came from everything surrounding revenge. Why was that?

My theory was that it was justified. In a world of moral dilemmas and unknowable futures, it was a clear goal.

A man kills your wife, so you take his head. A gang kills parents, so you spend your life hunting them down. A village burns your children in front of you, so you set them aflame in turn. A nation casts you aside and kills your entire family, so you plan its destruction.

Most people would never experience the catalysts required to carry out such plans. But a good story of hearing people getting what they deserve satisfies the mind the same way a good meal does for the body. It reaffirmed the idea that people get what they deserve. That, if that force didn’t exist, an individual had the power to put people in their place. Self-defense was another facet of that: that, if somebody were to wrong you, you could put them in their place — which was usually six feet under.

There are tales about the dangers of revenge. Countless tales. But deep down, people want that reaffirmation that, if something truly atrocious were to happen, they could do something about it with their own two hands.

Humans. Pathetic, affirmation-seeking creatures that couldn’t go three days without validation.

—Wait. What was I talking about?

That was definitely just sophistry borne of loneliness. Some mad ramblings were bound to come sooner or later, so I tried to undo some of those rogue thoughts before they could settle and become negative influences.

Revenge? Really? Concentrating on only revenge would be a disservice to the human race, who had plenty of other emotions other than rage and impotence. If you were going to yell at them for enjoying revenge stories, why not complain about all the other stories they enjoy?

Romance. Fantasy. Science fiction. Dramas, tragedies, comedies — hell, even naturalism. There are all kinds of stories for all sorts of people, and not everybody enjoys revenge and violence.

And c’mon, give me a break. Unknowable futures? For some, the unlimited possibility of the future was comfort itself. It was a source of hope, the belief that tomorrow may be the day where everything changes for the better.

Strength comes in multiple forms; it’s not all physical might. I’d argue that emotional strength was plenty, if not more important than how hard you can swing a stick. Suppress everything and you’re bound to crumble.

Don’t underestimate a human, ever. Or any living creature, should they be capable of the same level of reasoning. There’s a good reason the future is unknowable as it was; there lies infinite potential within each individual.

Crouching tigers and hidden dragons, my dear, foolish self.

Hold on a moment.

Did I just have an entire debate with myself? While slaughtering my way through attacking animals?

Sorry Tony, but I had to cut this vacation short for my sanity’s sake. I was moving tangentially to where the heart was in order to maximize my break time, but it seemed like my subconscious was throwing a fit.

No more messing around. Staying in this place any longer would drive me over the edge.

After I reached a certain distance from the heart, life ceased to exist.

There were no animals locked in the cycles of predator and prey.

There was no foliage or vines to cover the stark stone walls.

Strangest of all, there was no Ether in the air.

Animals instinctively strayed from the threshold, like they knew the unspoken consequences of crossing over. There were a few skeletal remains scattered in the caves following, but I had passed the point of no return. There wasn’t even a single mushroom in sight.

A grim wind stirred the air here, a vacuum that pulled all Ether towards the heart. I felt a great tugging on my own stores, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to drain me.

It was impossible to move Stony Tony without my usual Ether saturation technique, so I let him ride on my head, the absolute fat bastard. Compared to me, a sleek, polished pillar, Stony Tony had retained his rotund, spherical shape through the years. And he was heavy, too. I had to go much slower to ensure that he didn’t fall off me.

I expected similar terrain to the jungle, a fine labyrinth created from many years of tectonics and erosion, but the path forward were flat halls that occasionally branched away to other halls.

There were no ores. No changes in elevation. No colours.

It was like nature had completely given up.

For each kilometre of jungle, there were three of barren waste. This was a big place; I wandered around to see just how much these caverns diverged.

I was both blessed and cursed with a perfect memory, so I could relive every trauma and pleasure experienced thus far. It was quite useful in creating a rough internal map of where I’ve been and where animals are, but I noticed something as I explored the innermost caverns.

Here, the tunnels formed a perfect ring around the heart. If I pushed outwards far enough, I could see entire swathes of new, unfamiliar jungle.

My whole world, my entire existence, everything I had experienced until now was a fraction of what was down here.

So what lay at the center of my world?

Eventually, I reached the answer to that.

It was a door. A wide, circular door of silvery metal.

The final cavern was too rectangular, too long, too perfect to have been naturally formed.

This was a man-made corridor, and its guardian was a single white tiger.

I thought I had lost my mind. Why would there be a tiger sitting in the dark like that? The more I questioned myself, the more I had to confirm that, yes, there was actually a tiger guarding the door. This one’s body had no Ether — it was the first creature I had ever seen that had no signature at all.

There was no way an ordinary animal could’ve made it here. There were at least twenty kilometers of confusing nothingness separating here and the nearest source of livable land, and I was fairly certain a man-made cavern like the ones here had beyond poor circulation.

It had to have come from beyond that gate, but why was he standing there?

Don’t tell me… was this a robotic tiger?

No, that wasn’t it. His chest was moving in and out, slowly and methodically, breathing in stale air. The tension of his muscles, the bristling of his fur, the pulse of his blood, all of those factors were real.

There was definitely a flesh and blood creature in front of me.

How did it exist without Ether? I was so certain that Ether was a mandatory energy to live in this world; every creature, every plant, and nearly every object contained some amount of it. So how was this guy existing without it?

I moved towards the tiger, unsure what to make of his existence. After I passed a certain threshold, he moved towards me.

This animal was different. His gait was tall and proud, like that of a seasoned warrior, and his eyes weren’t just looking at me — he was looking at the path I came, the room, the air, even Stony Tony.

We faced each other near the center, separated by several short metres. Hesitantly, I tried calling out to him:

Hey, Mister Tiger? You’re not going to try to eat me or anything, right? I really wouldn’t appreciate that...

Mister Tiger stared down at me, narrowing his gaze. It almost seemed to be asking a question, but I didn’t know what it was saying.

I talked to myself to keep my communication and language skills fresh. Maybe he didn’t understand.

I tried again, backing up a little:

I’ve been wandering around for a really long time, and I was wondering if you could let me pass… I’d like to check out where all this Ether is going, and if possible, let me take some…

The tiger narrowed its eyes further. It began to growl.

Stony Tony? Could you help me out here? No? Understandable.

Sensing that I had somehow touched upon a nerve, I decided to back away.

The tiger didn’t let up.

It was my bad, my bad really… I’ll leave you alone now. I don’t want any trouble, Tiger, sir.

Sir? Please?

What if I gave you Stony Tony? He’s a pretty cool guy, hung out with me for a long time...

No matter what I said, the tiger kept walking.

He took a step forward. I scooted back. He took another step forward, and I dropped Stony Tony.

Then, without warning, he lurched at me.

I had no time to react — all I could do was push myself a little to the left.

His talon sliced straight through me, breaking off an entire corner of my body.

What I didn’t notice at first was the Ether on his claws — his weapons were absolutely coated with dripping red energy.

—It hurt.

The force of his strike sent me flying, painting the air with a trail of red energy.

He blew a hole straight through my torso. The moment I looked down, I noticed something much worse than physical damage.

I was bleeding Ether. I tried to control the flow with sheer force of will, but it wouldn’t stop.

The claws that I had failed to notice rent a hole in my very existence.