I focused my vision on Anise’s voice, trying to figure out what she had discovered. Anise pointed at one of the pillars, and I felt confused. I didn’t see anything there. It was a solid column of stone.
The others in the group seed to share my confusion, and shot puzzled expressions at Anise. Anise seed to realize we couldn’t see what she was pointing at. A mont later, an image appeared in our friendship bracelets.
One of the pillars contained a little pocket inside of it. But Anise couldn’t see it with her regular eyes - she had found it through her essence sense. Even to her essence sense, it was incredibly faint.
And oddly enough, nobody else could see it with their essence sense. Without Anise’s help, it seed like a normal pillar. I didn't know whether Anise could see it because she was 'Zelyrian' or because of her affinity for manifestation essence. But nobody else could detect it.
“Are you sure there’s sothing there?” asked Old Mo, glancing at the spot on the pillar that Anise was pointing at. Unlike us, he couldn’t look at the images Anise had sent over the communication bracelets,. As far as he knew, he was looking at a stone pillar.
Anise nodded. “It’s definitely there. I can’t reach it. Normally, I’d climb up, but…” Anise gestured towards her stump. Her arm was starting to regrow on its own, as {Pheonix’s Last Stand} amplified her regeneration. But her arm was nowhere near regrown yet. “Miria doesn’t have the essence to fix my arm yet.”
Old Mo nodded. “All right, I’ll poke at it. If you’re sure,” he said. He hopped onto the pillar with surprising agility and climbed up. Anise called directions out to him, and after a bit of fumbling around, he managed to locate the right spot.
A mont later, he frowned.
“I don’t feel anyth-” before he could finish speaking, I heard sothing crackle. Then the pillar changed colors. Old Mo clambered down the pillar, as it started to glow bright orange. Manifestation essence flooded into the pillar.
Anise stepped closer to the pillar, and the essence inside seed to react to her presence. Manifestation essence stopped flooding into the pillar, and instead gathered closer to her.
“Is it hostile?” asked Old Mo, fingering his gun as he glanced at .
“I don’t… think so?” I said.
The pillar stopped glowing and seed to shrink without changing shapes. My brain started to hurt as a contradiction unfolded in the space in front of . To my spatial senses, the pyramid had beco similar to a black hole for a mont.
Finally, I realized that the stone pillar wasn’t shrinking. Sohow, the space in front of was bending and contorting, as the pillar reached to sowhere else. I concentrated on it using my spatial senses to figure out what it was doing.
It seed to be using so sort of portal-like ability.
A mont later, the spatial contortions around the pillar disappeared. The room was almost exactly the sa as before, but now there was a glowing stone cube present. It flew through the air, and stopped right in front of Anise’s face. I stared at the little fist-sized stone cube in awe.
It crackled with manifestation essence. It had hundreds of tis more essence than I did. And all that essence was inside of a stone cube the size of my fist. I had no idea how the Zelyrians had managed that, but it gave a new appreciation for their mastery of magic.
“What do you think this thing is?” asked Anise as she reached out to touch it.
The mont she took it, sothing changed.
It felt like our surroundings had… lost sothing. The pyramid was sohow less than before. Instead, part of the pyramid now felt connected to Anise. The mont I saw sothing latch on to Anise, I panicked. I scanned the strange connection between the pyramid and Anise to try to figure out if it was malevolent. Then I relaxed. It felt more like… Anise had donned a suit of armor. Nothing fundantal about her had changed - she was just connected to the pyramid now. It almost felt like the pyramid acknowledge her.
I asked.
she said.
I felt relieved, and then looked at our surroundings. After Anise connected to the pyramid, the essence in our surroundings was going crazy.
The pyramid walls stopped looking like nothing more than ordinary stone. Now it felt like soone had wrapped a handful of starlight inside of each stone. I didn’t know how else to describe it. The starlight didn’t feel like an actual star. It felt like soone had taken the idea of a star out of a children’s nursery rhy and then poured it into the pyramid's walls. The starlight was gentle, and had no connection to heat or mass at all. It was sothing I didn’t usually associate with manifestation essence. The manifestation essence of our previous world had felt more like a math equation - there was only one ‘correct’ version of it. I had thought that this was an innate property of manifestation essence. The essence usage I saw in this pyramid… challenged my understanding a bit. The starlight in the walls felt very different from what I believed a star should look like.
The images that I had been inspecting were also part of the pyramid's essence network. Before, the pictures had been simple murals adorning the walls. Now, I could see that they were much more important than simple murals.
Sohow, the Zelyrians had turned paintings into a part of their magic system. I had no idea how that was even possible, but it was obvious that they had done it. I also didn't know what the paintings were actually doing. All I knew was that it was woven into the rest of the magic in our surroundings. I had a sneaking suspicion that removing even one painting would cause the pyramid to implode. Even with one of the four walls of this room left bare, the essence in our surroundings was incomplete.
A very small part of wondered if there was anything I could learn from these paintings. I had to shake the thought away. I had too many other projects to focus on right now. I still needed to learn shapeshifting and illusions before I added more to my plate. The fact that they were specialties of my essence, but I relied on absorption essence to handle both, was embarrassing.
Finally, the essence in our surroundings cald down. The manifestation essence was still present, but it was no longer roiling like boiling water. It had stabilized.
Anise smiled brightly at the stone.
she sent, sending a picture through the bracelets. To Anise’s eyes, the pyramid was aglow with manifestation essence, but she was getting a much more complete picture than I was. The murals on the wall were being used as sothing like anchor points. They recognized Zelyrians, using the paintings as cores to anchor everything to the concept of Zelyr. It was like so kind of madhat spell focus centered on an entire nation.
said Sallia, sounding sowhat sleepy.
I couldn’t help but agree.
said Anise, after a few seconds.
asked Sallia, before we could investigate the glowing wall.
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