Essentia Animus

40-Exploring Alternatives

By late afternoon, the three girls finally returned to the shelter, knowing they could successfully control their destructive impulses. However, in turn, they were left confused at the discovery of even more familiar abilities, a secondary form of their gifts.

Riyxia was especially baffled at this turn of events, Sryine finding an affinity for elemental forces as Vwyx was suddenly found capable of transforming the properties of inanimate objects, such as switching stone to wood. Vwyx and Riyxia had always seemed like a bit of a parallel, with consideration to Riyxia's healing versus Vwyx's repairing. However, Riyxia had then been able to change the properties of the people she could heal, while Vwyx could reshape the objects she could repair. Now, she could also change the properties of the objects she could repair too, that stole from her entire side of the advantage here. Vwyx's gift also had a lot more reach for ways it could change objects; size, weight, density, material. Sryine had mentioned that it was a lot similar to the details of alchemy that she could remember reading about from the Terran Mythos, apparently a myth about a myth. The original myth said something about changing metal to mineral, like changing sheet metal into crystal. Vwyx had actually already done that, even though it had only been a short time since they returned.

Sryine was actually playing with a ball of lightning, using it as a personal lamp. She claimed that the Terran Mythos tended to use a lot of lighting for things too, almost everything there ran on lightning somehow. Vwyx's infliction on Riyxia's gift was one thing, but to find both Sryine and Vwyx suddenly advancing dramatically in areas of the gift, reaching new and greater heights, it made Riyxia feel like she was falling behind again. Actually, she specifically was falling behind now, her only advantage had been that she was the only one around with control over her destructive influence. With the other two safely learning control and gaining such improvements, Riyxia just felt helpless in keeping up with the others at all.

"Don't worry Riyxia, your spectral form has already been a sort of second gift, we can just keep working on it from that perspective." "That really doesn't count, drifting around looking at stuff has far fewer applications than this elementalist and alchemy-type stuff. Even my actual gift has a lot more substance in comparison." "Well, just look on the bright side, it means you can focus more of your time on perfecting your own unique talents, while the other girls will have more expectations left to them. I'll need to actually start work on that, figuring out what lessons will help with their newly discovered gifts. Such versatile gifts will need versatile expectations." Ayzherie felt this constancy could be very advantageous for Riyxia, making it easier for Riyxia to apply her own abilities. Sryine and Vwyx however knew that things were going to get several times rougher on them, with training involving control and their new gift, all at once. It might even be at once, they were well aware of how Ayzher had expected Riyxia to command both her spectral form and her gift at the same time. This could easily have them expected to make use of both of their gifts simultaneously. They weren't wrong either, Ayzherie was considering including material composition shifting as part of Vwyx's regular form shaping, they could always use some extra wood around here after all. Sryine meanwhile could always be expected to wield illusionary and real lighting both at the same time, and hitting targets with such lighting with split second reflexes where she would have to determine if the target needed real or illusionary lightning, making use of this new appreciation of lightning. Such lessons could even begin tomorrow.

"So, Eqriuxzl is actually here today. I was talking with him earlier about your strife from yesterday, as you had recommended. If your training is done, I would think it appropriate for you three to go drop in on him, have him check you three over and make use of his knowledge to see if he's got anything new for you. He seemed excited about the idea earlier, but understanding in our plans to ensure a safe study condition. I expect I'll have time to drop in myself to see how things are going, but I really should finish some of the tasks I've already been working on first." Ayzherie might not have more training for today, but already had something for them to look into today. At least Eqriuxzl could possibly have some interesting information on things for them to learn about. The girls set off to his study, finding him absorbed in his books on arrival, making unusual calculations, while not even noticing he had guests.