The Glimmerfang was no longer just a beast of flesh and fur. Kaelen saw its life force as a raging fire of aggression, and he had met it with a piece of his own soul.
With a final and desperate shove of this newfound energy, he pushed...
The Glimmerfang caught mid-lunge, let out a strangled yelp. It stumbled back with its heavy paws tangling as if its own body had betrayed it. It shook its massive head with its crystalline fangs chattering with confusion rather than menace.
The burning intent Kaelen had seen in its essence flickered and dimmed and then sputtered out, replaced by bewilderment.
The alpha creature looked at him as a puzzle it couldn't solve. It whined in a low and pathetic sound that was a stark contrast to its earlier snarls and turned, nudging its pack into a hasty retreat.
Kaelen remained standing with his arm outstretched and his body taut like a wire humming with an unknown frequency, and the forest fell silent save for the crackle of his small fire.
His breath came in ragged and painful gasps. His heartbeat beat loudly in the sudden quiet, and he was trembling from the raw and untamed power that was still thrumming through his veins.
He lowered his arm, looking at his hand as if it belonged to a stranger.
"What… what was that?" he whispered hoarsely to himself.
The world was different, rent and the greens and browns of the Whispering Marches were now painted with an invisible layer of vibrancy he had never perceived.
The glowing moss on a nearby tree wasn't just a light source; he could feel its gentle pulsing life. The very air around him seemed to shimmer with a delicate silver web of energy that connected everything. It was a sensation so profound, so overwhelming, it made him dizzy.
He stumbled back and collapsed onto the damp earth with his back hitting the rough bark of the hollow log. He stared up at the canopy where faint starlight filtered through the thick leaves.
"Father…" he whispered with a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "You trained me in the four elements. You drilled me until my knuckles bled trying to draw a spark of fire, a wisp of air." He ran a hand through his matted hair. "You called me a failure. A dud. Devoid of the gift."
He looked at his hands again, flexing his fingers. The residual thrum of power was beginning to fade, leaving behind an echo of what had just happened.
This wasn't a fire. It certainly lacked consuming heat. It wasn't water with its flow. It wasn't the unbending strength of earth or the fickle whims of air. This was something else, and it felt… fundamental. Like the source from which the other elements were born!
"Aether," he whispered the word from the dusty heretical texts his tutors had warned him about. The fifth element. The spirit. The life force of the world. It was dismissed as a myth and a fairy tale for children.
But he had just touched it. He had wielded it. He hadn't just survived by it, he had commanded. For the first time in his life, stripped of his title, his home and his family, Kaelen felt the rush of true power!
The hunger and the fear were replaced by an insatiable curiosity. He became a student of the Marches, and the forest itself became his tutor.
"Alright," he said aloud on the first morning, his voice still raspy. He stood before a small, unfamiliar flower with petals that glowed with a soft blue light.
He hadn't been this close to one before. He could see it now, not just with his eyes. He saw the faint silvery threads of Aether being drawn from the soil, flowing up its stem and pooling in its petals, creating the gentle luminescence.
He reached out his fingers, hovering just above the bloom.
"Can I…?" he murmured more to the flower than to himself. "Just a little."
He focused on remembering the feeling of the Glimmerfang's retreat. He didn't push this time. He gently pulled. He envisioned a single one of those silvery threads detaching from the flower and connecting to his fingertip. For a moment, nothing happened, and he sighed in frustration.
"Come on. Don't be shy" he coaxed. "I'm not going to hurt you."
He tried again this time with less force and more focus.
Wait.. there was a flicker.
He felt a trickle of energy flow into his finger. It was barely perceptible like a single drop of water on his tongue, but it was there.
The flower's blue light dimmed for a second before returning to its normal brightness. Kaelen laughed joyfully.
"It works. It actually works."
His next lesson was healing. He'd scraped his forearm badly during his panicked flight into the forest. The long gash was red and inflamed. He sat by his now-permanent camp, staring at the wound.
"If I can borrow life, can I use it to mend?" he wondered. He looked around and his gaze settled on a patch of the glowing moss that clung to the side of a fallen tree. It pulsed with a steady and peaceful energy.
He knelt, placing his uninjured hand on the moss.
"I'm sorry to ask this of you," he said earnestly, feeling foolish and yet deeply serious. "But I'm in a bit of a state. I need your help. Just a bit of your strength. To heal."
He closed his eyes and placed his wounded forearm just above the moss. He reached out with his senses, feeling the soft Aether of the plant life. He pulled gently and steadily, drawing the energy not into his whole body but directing it, visualizing it flowing into the open wound on his arm.
A cool and soothing sensation spread across his skin. It wasn't the sharp sting of a healing salve but a deep internal comfort as if his own cells were being energized and encouraged. He opened his eyes and watched mesmerized.
The redness around the cut began to fade. The edges of the gash slowly and miraculously seemed to pull together. It wasn't instantaneous but in the span of a few minutes, the wound looked as if it had already been healing for a day or two.
"By the gods," he whispered, touching the spot. The pain was gone and replaced by a faint itch. "This changes everything."
His confidence grew with each passing day in the marshes. He learned to siphon small amounts of Aether from the trees to bolster his stamina, allowing him to go longer without food. He didn't need to hunt; he could simply borrow a sliver of vitality from the forest itself, feeling the deep ancient strength of an old oak flow into his limbs, dispelling his fatigue.
His senses sharpened by the Aether became preternaturally keen. He could hear the scuttling of a beetle under a log fifty feet away. He could see the intricate patterns on a moth's wings in near-total darkness.
"You see Father?" he said to the empty air one afternoon with a cocky grin on his face as he effortlessly vaulted over a ravine he would have struggled with a week ago. "You cast me out to die. But you didn't banish me to a wasteland. You banished me to the very source of all power. Your biggest mistake wasn't disowning me. It was not realized what I was."
He felt strong. He felt alive. He felt… limitless. And that was his undoing.
On the fifth day, exhaustion hit him. His constant small-scale siphoning was taking a toll on his concentration. He needed more than just a trickle. He needed a reservoir. He had grown accustomed to taking polite sips of Aether. Now he wanted a flood.
"Alright," he declared to the silent forest with his voice ringing with a newfound arrogance. He spread his arms wide, tilting his head back to look at the interlocking canopy above.
"I've been careful. I've been respectful. But I need more. I need to feel that power again. The real power, like when I faced the Glimmerfang."
He took a deep breath.
"You are ancient. You are vast. Your life is an ocean, and I am just a man dying of thirst. Lend me your strength. Don't hold back. Give it to me!"
He closed his eyes and opened his senses completely. He didn't just reach for one plant or one tree. He reached for everything. He cast a net of intent over the entire clearing, demanding that the Aether answer his call.
For a terrifying second, there was nothing. Then the forest responded.
A thousand threads of Aether, a million, a billion.. from every leaf, every root, every insect, every drop of moisture in the air..lashed out and slammed into him at once.
A roar filled his head, the collective life-song of the entire forest screaming into his consciousness. His vision exploded into a blinding supernova of pure white light.
"No!" he gasped, but the word was lost.
The power was too much. It wasn't nourishing; it was scouring. It flooded his senses, overloading every nerve, threatening to burn him out from the inside. He felt his control of his very sense of self begin to fray and dissolve into the overwhelming tide.
He was no longer Kaelen; he was a leaf, a tree, a mushroom, a worm writhing in the soil. He was everything and nothing. The life force of the Marches was consuming him.
His body seized. He cried out with a soundless scream trapped in his mind. As his consciousness fractured, the world around him warped in response to the massive flux of energy.
Trees bent and twisted as if in a hurricane, though not a breath of wind stirred. The glowing flora pulsed with a rhythm, with their colors shifting from serene blues and greens to violent reds and purples. The very ground beneath his feet seemed to ripple, the earth itself groaning under the strain of his connection.
And deep within the heart of the Whispering Marches, something ancient and vast, something that had slept for centuries, felt the violent disturbance. A consciousness that dwarfed that of any single tree or beast stirred from its slumber.
And as Kaelen was being ripped apart by the power he had so arrogantly summoned, this ancient presence turned its attention and for the first time in an age it truly looked at him…