146 - Rocks. I. Like.
Alexandra waited for Speck to leave the room before turning up the intensity of her light.
“You’re good with that, right?”
“I’m a ghost, not a darkness elemental,” Leander scoffed. “Why would I be afraid of light?”
Alexandra shrugged. “You never know. And the heat?”
“Can’t feel it.”
She nodded. “Well, since Speck is taking care of the food, you may explain how I can hide my divine class.”
Leander flew around her. “I said I would only do so after you ate.”
“I thought you were on a timer. Just get to it, old man. Maybe I’ll let you impart more guidance to me if you perform adequately.”
“If only it were a local who had found their way to me.” The ghost’s shoulders sagged. “Summoned are all the same. No reverence for our elders.” He shook his head and straightened up. “Remind me of the good old days.”
“Are you also from Earth?” Alexandra asked.
“Earth? No, I come from Gaia. I was born in the great city of Thebes…” he trailed off.
Alexandra frowned. “Sounds like Earth. Ancient Greece.”
“It might be. All heroes and apostles of my generation came from Gaia. I would ask how my hometown is doing, but so much time has passed that I don’t believe it to be relevant.”
“I’ve never been there. I’m sorry,” Alexandra said.
He waved his hand. “No matter. You are right that we have limited time. I know how annoying it is for anyone blessed by a divinity to know your identity. I’ve lived through it, after all. Lucky for you, I designed a simple spell to prevent that. It’s not perfect, as you must refrain from using mana in front of them, but it served me well.”
Alexandra felt a pinch in her chest. No way. It couldn’t be.
Leander coughed. “I called that spell: Stasis Core Seal.” He looked at her. “Are you alright? Your face is so pale. I knew we should have waited until you filled your stomach.”
“No,” Alexandra said after a moment of silence. “It’s just that I had this skill before.”
Leander's eyebrows shot up. “The system took my spell and made it a skill? How would you even acquire something like that?”
“It’s a thing from my class. Don’t worry about it.”
He nodded. “I guess divine classes are still divine classes. Well, if you have the skill, you’re good. We can move on to—”
“I don’t have the skill,” Alexandra interrupted.
Leander looked at her. “You’re a confusing person… Erm…”
“Alexandra.”
“You’re a confusing person, Alexandra.”
She raised her hands. “The skill broke apart when I got my solar affinity.”
Leander rubbed his eyebrows. “Your what now?”
He drifted closer, close enough that she felt a cold sensation against her skin despite his claim that heat meant nothing to a ghost.
“Solar affinity,” Alexandra repeated. “It’s also a skill. As far as I can tell, I’m the first one to get it.”
“Mana doesn't have affinities,” Leander said.
“Mine does.”
“Show me.”
Alexandra drew a thread of mana up through her chest and let it sit in her open palm. Leander leaned in until his nose nearly touched it. He circled her hand once, then again, faster.
“I’ve been proven wrong,” he murmured. “This clearly isn’t normal mana.” He circled. “Let me see your core.”
She hesitated.
“Come on, I could look without asking if I wanted. Trust me for a second.”
“Fine,” Alexandra said.
Leander pushed a thread of his own mana into her core, feeling around. “Hmm.”
“Found anything?” Alexandra asked.
“Wait a moment.”
Leander withdrew his thread of mana slowly. He hovered back, turning to face her fully.
“Your mana doesn’t sit right,” he said. “It feels like an elemental’s.”
Alexandra frowned. “I’m not an elemental.”
“I didn’t say you were one.” Leander circled her palm again. “Elementals’ mana carries the signature of their element. Speck is like that. All the mana it produces is attuned to darkness.”
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“So an affinity is like being an elemental?”
Leander shook his head. “No. Your affinity is less essential to what you are. Speck is darkness incarnate. You’re just a sun-flavored human.”
Alexandra tilted her head forward. “I’m not sure how I should take this.”
“It’s neither good nor bad,” Leander said. “From what I can tell, it means that your mana carries some properties of the sun that conflicted with my spell. Specifically, the stasis part. The idea behind Stasis Core Seal is to stop your mana from moving, but the sun cannot stop.”
Alexandra bit her lip. “Is there a solution?”
“There’s always a solution.”
She smiled.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have it,” Leander continued.
“Man.” Alexandra groaned. “Why?”
“I’m sure you noticed how elementals are infinitely more common in this region than everywhere else on Laika,” he started.
Alexandra nodded.
“Long before my time, a meteor crashed here, creating the basin as we know it today. When it landed, the ambient mana was disturbed, making it so nothing can get past Platinum. However, with that came a large concentration of conceptual truths, which lowered the requirements for elementals to be born.”
“What does that have to do with hiding my class?” Alexandra asked.
“Be patient. I’m getting to it.” Leander poked her forehead with his spectral hand. It was cold. “Basically, for an elemental to be born, it must understand its element’s conceptual truth at a high enough level for it to wield its attuned mana.”
He paused.
“So what you’re saying is…”
Leander smiled. “Get good.”
“Fuck you.”
Speck picked this moment to return from its hunt. It sneaked at the edge of the room, hiding in the cracks untouched by her light. Noticing it, Alexandra dropped the intensity so it could hand over the lizards to her.
“Lizards,” it said, scurrying back into a hole.
“Thank you, Speck.” Alexandra grabbed the two lizard corpses on the ground. They were about the size of her hand, which was ridiculously small compared to the Gold they’d spotted earlier. “Bronze?”
“Yes. Easy.”
Alexandra placed the two lizards in a corner of the room and fired at them with Solar Blast.
“Excessive,” Leander commented.
“That’s all I have to cook them. I’m not eating that raw.”
Even cooked—well, charred—it wasn’t the most appetizing meal.
“I’m not suggesting you eat them raw. I was thinking you could use your solar mana to cook them with a custom spell.”
Her smile froze. She looked at him, then back at the two burned lizards. “Oh.”
“How do you think conceptual truths work? You need to practice.” Leander shook his head. “Am I right, Speck?”
“Right. Alexandra. Fool.”
The ghost nodded sagely. “Finally someone sensible. I should teach you instead of this idiot.”
“Wise. Ghost,” Speck whispered.
“Hey!” Alexandra turned to her familiar. “You traitor.”
She picked a lizard off the ground and blew on it. Black flakes drifted off the meat and settled on her knee.
“Eat,” Leander said. “You’ll need the energy for tomorrow.”
“It’s charcoal.”
“Your fault.”
She tore off a leg and chewed. It tasted like she imagined it would, dry and burned. She swallowed anyway.
Leander drifted toward Speck’s hole, hands clasped behind his back like a professor pacing a lecture hall. “While she suffers, let me tell you something worth knowing, Speck.”
Speck materialized a shadow figure, sitting on a rock like a student at a desk. “Listening.”
“Darkness is more than the absence of light.” Leander spread his arms, and the shadow behind him seemed to deepen, though nothing in the room had changed. “Light merely draws a boundary around an object. Before the boundary, the object has no edges, no weight. It could be anything. It could be everything.”
Alexandra paused with a lizard leg halfway to her mouth. “That’s not how anything works.”
“I didn’t ask you.” Leander didn’t turn around. “Speck, when you sit in the cracks untouched by her light, what do you feel?”
Speck considered this with the gravity the question required. “Safe. Happy.”
“Because in darkness, you are not one thing. You are potential. The moment light finds you, you become small, afraid, definite. In darkness, you have no bounds.”
“Boundless,” Speck said, excitement seeping through its breaths.
“Precisely so.” Leander nodded, a satisfied smile plastered on his face.
Alexandra swallowed her bite. “Leander, you’re going to give it an identity crisis.”
“I’m expanding its understanding of conceptual truth. You should be grateful. This is the same principle your solar affinity will eventually have to grapple with.” He finally turned to face her. “Everything under the sun is defined, fixed, forced into a single shape. That’s the price of being what you are.”
“Sounds like a you problem, actually,” Alexandra said, picking meat off bone. “I like having a shape.”
“For now.”
Speck’s shadow limb darted into the passage it took to the lizard cavern and returned dragging a rock nearly as big as its own head. It set the rock down in the deepest patch of shadow along the wall, patted it once, and went back for another.
Alexandra stopped chewing. “What is it doing?”
“Rocks,” Speck said, without looking up. “I. Like.”
“What for?”
“Take.”
A second rock joined the first. Then a pebble, placed with great care beside them. Speck stepped back to survey the small, ugly pile, then nodded once, satisfied, and went hunting for more.
Leander watched with open pride. “See? A natural philosopher.”
“Speck is hoarding rocks in the dark because you told it objects don’t exist unless you look at them.”
“Speck is a great student.”
“It’s rocks, Leander.”
“Rocks that could be anything,” the ghost said, “until you shine your little light on them and ruin it.”
Speck returned with a fourth rock, larger than the others, and wedged it into the pile with great solemnity. It patted the whole arrangement once more, whispered something too quiet to catch.
Alexandra looked at the pile, then at Leander, then back at the pile. She took another bite of burned lizard.
Then the rocks disappeared.
She spat her food. “How? Where?”
“Darkness,” Speck said, its shadow figure happily nodding.
“I always forget how good elementals are at understanding their conceptual truth,” Leander said. “It took the rocks and hid them in the darkness. Think of it like a spatial storage item.” He looked at her. “For the record, I don’t expect you to progress that fast. We’ll call it a success if you can hide your divine class by the time I dissipate.”