The thick clouds swirl overhead, forming shapes in shifting shades of grey, mixing with the pale stone coating the branches and the deep blue of the massive leaves. Should I reach up, I could become lost in the thick soup that hides the sky from us.

This weather is a cold sort of rage, a storm that refuses to gather, a silent threat that never comes to fruition. It’s the anger that comes in silence.

Past this illusory ceiling, the glass egg hovers in orbit above this world. We have a rotating crew maintaining the vessel, but sadly there’s not much use for it where it is.

Without a means of fuelling it, we can’t use it to take us to other worlds, and without armaments, it can’t even be used as a weapon. As it is, I’m worried that it might be targeted and destroyed by some powerful being in this system.

“Why did you send everyone else away?” The innocent question is asked by a young girl, the same young girl who approached us before.

I sit at the edge of their town, hanging my legs over a great fall. The branches here are so thick as to hide the red world below and all we can see is an expanse of blue and grey.

“I don’t want them to die,” I answer, looking around for her parents. No one comes running to take the child away, so I give up on the search.

“You think they’ll die?”

“Well, me and Miss Blue are about to start competing with each other to see which of us is stronger,” I say. “I don’t want them getting hurt in the mess.”

“It sounds like you don’t trust them,” she says.

Sky, I’ll call her for now. She’s certainly blue enough for the name to be appropriate.

“It’s not about trust,” I say. “They’re not strong enough to survive a fight like this one, and I don’t want to see them get hurt.”

Sky shrugs, staring down at the sea of leaves below us. She swings her feet over the great fall, unafraid.

“I had a brother that was weak, too,” she says. “He was nice, but he’s gone, and no one talks about him anymore. Dad, too, but I don’t remember him much.”

“That’s sad.”

“Mhmm,” she mumbles. “It’s just what happens.”

A cool breeze cuts through the air, ruffling the feathers on her wings

“Aren’t your friends worried about you?” Sky asks.

“I’m sure that they are.”

“What if you’re the one that’s too weak?” She asks.

“I won’t be,” I say. My confidence is born not only from my youthful sense of immortality but also from my insurance in the form of Arduelle. She may or may not save me, but it’s better than what she promises my friends.

“Everyone says that,” she says.

I don’t have anything to reply to that. I know that it’s arrogance that guides me, but I have good reason for that arrogance, and I know that others aren’t strong enough to keep up with me.

“You should trust your friends,” Sky says. “I know I feel bad when my friends tell me that I can’t play with them. Your friends probably feel the same way.”

She’s just a kid, but it’s not like she has no understanding of the topic. It’s not that complicated really. It’s just that she has a different understanding of life, where I need for everyone to survive, she’s grown up losing people. To her, it’s a given that people will die.

“Sky, there you are!” A woman rushes out of the town at us.

“I’m here mom,” Sky says. “I’m not doing anything stupid, you don’t have to worry so much.”

“Really?” She asks, looking between her and me. “I think I have a good reason to be worried. Go back home, there’s going to be a hunt and I don’t want you anywhere near the feast until everything is cooked.”

“But mooom.”

“No complaints, get back home. Now.” She leaves no room for her daughter to complain, and the little Sky offers me a wave as she leaves.

“What are you doing?” The mother asks, flapping her wings in irritation. Her skin is slightly darker than most others, a deep blue that seems almost like a natural human hue, but just alien enough to dissuade the illusion.

“I’m waiting for the competition to get started,” I say.

“Do you want to kill Blue-Crown?” She asks.

“I want to make a world where no one dies,” I say. “For that I need power. If this tree of yours is in my way, then we need to come to some sort of agreement, or we need to fight until one of us wins.”

“Who did you lose?” she asks, shaking her head and taking her daughter’s place beside me. She’s not nearly so relaxed, however. “Who did you lose that made you like this?”

“No one,” I say. Thinking back, it’s not quite true. Even now I sometimes think back to that crashed world, and in particular, the goat girl who tried to hide from the fighting, only to die in the makeshift arena set up to test her. “No one I knew.

“There were people who seemed interesting. People that I’d like to get to know, but then… then the chance was gone. I can’t let the same happen to the people I love.”

“You’re trying to deny death itself?” She asks, “You can’t win that fight.”

“I can’t?” I ask. “There are beings out there more powerful and long-lived than this old tree under our asses. If I fight hard enough, I can get whatever I want.”

“Everything dies,” she says, shaking her head at me. “You’re going to lose.”

“I won’t give up on the people I love,” I say. “I will protect them, whatever comes.”

“You’re weak alone.”

“Is Blue-Crown weak alone?” I ask.

“She’s stronger with us, it’s the reason we live here with her. It’s the reason she keeps us here.”

“Then serve me the same, when the time comes,” I say, standing up.

Down below, through the few eyes that still live, I can see the coming of a flood. The red ocean is rising on the horizon; a wave so large that it seems apocalyptic to my human eyes, but this world is not a human world.

It moves slow, and I still have minutes to wait before it reaches shore.

The woman stands aside from me, staring at me. What thoughts and feelings fill her at the sight of me?

She is beautiful.

Enough so that it should give me pause.

When did I stop paying attention to these things? Is it because I’ve already fallen in love, and I already have a stable home? Or is it something else?

I don’t know.

What else has changed with me?

I’m left with the question of who I want to be, something that I can’t answer until I get back home. More than half of me is back there, waiting for this fight to be done.

“When we’re done with this,” I say to the beautiful young mother as she hangs back to watch me. “I want to invite you and your family to my empire. See what I’m building and tell me again that I’m wrong.”

She nods quietly, and I step off of the branch, falling between the limbs of my foe. It’s time to see if I can build my empire around this tree, or if I have to cut it down to pave my way forward.

The wave that washes nearer to us glows bright with magic. There’s a power that thrums through it driving it toward us faster and faster, it may just be intended to wash away the massive tree.

It will fail.

I hover in the air and watch passively as the water drains from the swamp out into the deeper ocean, feeding the massive wave, and getting ready to crash into the shore.

Beasts and bugs are drawn out into the waters, staining them a deeper red as something inside tears them apart. Claws, teeth, and tentacles rip and tear through anything in their way, monsters carried in the terrible hundred-metre-tall wave.

It strikes the shore, tearing up the earth and scattering the smaller plants. Even steel roots cannot resist the monstrous momentum that washes across the land. The swamp floods, and for a moment it becomes a seafloor until the water spreads out, stretching deeper into the continent.

Stone islands are crushed by the force and the ferrets inside are swept up and consumed by the vicious, hungering swarms that fill the fast-flowing waters. Anything not buried beneath the earth is slaughtered in the time it takes for the water to cross the land.

Yet, for all the terrible force of it, it can only push so far. The wave is pulled down to ground level over only a few kilometres, leaving the fish, crabs, and stranger aquatic monsters stranded on the hard rock that remains.

There are no questions asked, or words exchanged, they slaughter and consume. Plants, and animals, smart and not, they kill just about everything in their paths even each other. There is no peaceful solution to be found with them.

Swooping down to a familiar little stone island, one of the few to survive impact, I smash open a crab as it tries to pry its way inside.

A concentrated blast of annihilation and fire cracks open its mind, killing it clean. I draw the mana from its corpse, consuming and converting it as quick as I can, reforming my crystalline mana state in less than a minute.

The ferrets are busy at war, using their shock spears to keep the aquatic swarm at bay while choking on the waters that have flooded their home. I cut through the swarm that covers their fort, feeding on the corpses to keep on fighting. It’s become a habit at this point.

Some monsters are more difficult to slay than others, and I need to take time disassembling them. Even when I’m finished, I’ve taken no wounds, my practice and Skills are starting to show their value.

Standing atop the body of a walking sea anemone, I take in the state of the battlefield. The massive tree is writhing its roots all about, crushing the swarm beneath it and consuming the flesh. The bandits swarm in the skies above, swooping low to slay the fish and crabs and carry the corpses closer to the base of the tree.

I see.

This isn’t a war.

It isn’t a battle, not to Blue-Crown.

I’m here, not to fight against an army. No, they’re not even an army.

This is a feast, and they’re the food. What the tree wants of me, is to prove that I deserve a place at this table. If I can seize a chair, then I can’t be forced onto the table as the next meal.

“An eating contest…” the words slip out with the realization. “She challenged me to a goddamn eating contest. No, it’s not quite that either. It’s not about how much I eat, it’s that I have the right table manners; that I don’t have to fight with my food to force it down.”

“What are you doing?” Pao asks, shouting from within the stone island. “Do you want to get stabbed!”

“I came to help. I wouldn’t want our trade partners getting buried in all this,” I say. “You can handle yourselves?”

“We’re strong enough to defend our home!” She shouts, inciting a cheer from her people.

“Good, then I’m going to go make myself a meal,” I say. Standing up tall and overseeing the flat lands as another wave washes in over us. I fly up to watch as more monsters are set on the red mud and grey stone.

There are beasts here with more mana than me, denser mana, and more battle experience.

I need to treat them as I would a meal. Toy with them, even. Like making little snowmen from my mashed potatoes, and adding a little carrot nose too.

I’ve left too many Skills and adaptions unpractised, or sometimes completely unused. If I’m to make myself at home here, then it’s not just the mana that I can consume that matters. It’s making use of them, taking parts that might be useful, and practising my Skills against them.

Looking over the mass of writhing flesh, spreading out into the distance, I start off by tagging them. I steal the eyes of as many as I can, kicking and flying between monsters and getting a clearer view of the world through them.

Once I’ve gained enough sight to feel comfortable, I find my first real target. The creature is a strange blob of flesh and cartilage, morphing and reshaping itself into unreal forms. It consumes plants and soil and animal remains, concentrating it all inside before spitting out the mana-less remains.

Most importantly, it throws itself around on the air itself. Or not quite. At first, I think it might be moving by grasping the very fabric of space itself, which would be a good catch, but no. Instead, it’s using force magic.

The same magic that I use, but unlike me, it has a talent. A valuable meal, then.

I can feel the eyes watching me, the monarch tree observing me from above. Yet… only a child tries to pretend that they’re an adult. Only someone weak pretends to be strong.

I ignore her, and throw myself at the massive creature, lashing out with concentrated attacks from my hands. It reacts with blows of force magic that I disrupt with stored annihilation nets, before cutting into the monster.

It slaps at me, but even with the tremendous force behind its attacks, I’m unafraid of it. I cut into its flesh, grasping a length of cartilage and tearing it free. My fingernail sinks into the hard, flexible material, drawing out the essence.

My fingernails have been adapted in a way that’s difficult to practice. It allows me to store certain elements in my nails, which lets me fabricate a fake talent. I’ve seen others do similar, Adler with her necklace for example, but it requires drawing on the remains of a being with the right talent in the first place.

I test out my force magic, running it through my forefinger which has absorbed most of the power from the now crinkled and broken cartilage of the aquatic beast. I pull at the monster with a powerful blast of magic.

My forged talent only makes it marginally stronger, a fraction of a fraction, but as I draw out the talent from the next piece of cartilage, it becomes that much more effective. I tear the beast apart, its rage-filled screams fill the air, unheard by the uncaring hoard.

Fighting off scavengers until I finish with my meal, drawing out all the mana I can take and pulling the talent from its cartilage, I look out over the plains, seeking my next snack.

Something moves at my back, but I see it as clear as what lies before me. I whip my hair back around, catching the stinger in my ponytail, before turning to stomp on the head of the beast that dared to attack me.

If all else about this world disappoints, then at least we might have a thriving fishing trade in our future. Maybe I could even turn the glass egg into an oversized fishing trawler.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 60,892 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 30,271 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)