ancient, and it was far stronger than I thought, so maybe it actually came from the seven hells. Even after I opened the channels in you there wasn’t enough power.”
More questions started to pop up in Sarena’s mind, but before she could speak a loud growling sound emitted from her stomach. Suddenly she was able to feel the hunger that should have been gnawing at her for the past day and a half, almost crippling her with its sudden ferocity. She knew she had to eat something soon, and there was only one real option for that. Looking up at the creature at the top of the spire, she shook her head and stood up, using Heartseeker - no, Tyrus , she corrected herself - to stand up.
“Sorry about the hunger. I can stop you from feeling the effects from it, but you’ll still starve either way. Your aura was protesting against me, so I decided to stop blocking it,” Tyrus said.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a way to get that thing down here would you? With all those new tricks you’ve learned there must be something you can do about it," Sarena said.
There was a pause for a moment before Sarena heard anything. “Ah, no, actually I can’t do anything about that. I can only affect you, nothing else. Just do the opposite of what you did to make that big spike," Tyrus answered.
“Just do the opposite...” Sarena mumbled to herself, “How am I supposed to do the opposite when I don’t even know what I did in the first place! I just pushed all the stones I could at that thing! I didn’t know what would happen after that!” She felt the hunger suddenly dissipate, and her body stopped trembling.
“It’s not like I know how you did it either!” Tyrus’ voice resounded loudly throughout her mind. “I can only provide raw power, I don’t know how any of the other elements work. If I wasn’t trapped in here I might be able to do something about it, but giving you the ability to draw on my strength as if it was your own is already the limit of what I can do. Be glad that my power has no aspect. Otherwise even with everything I did, you wouldn’t be able to use it for anything,"
Sarena scowled as she stood there, her mind racing as she tried to remember what she had done to create the spire. Tyrus had told her to draw on the warmth he was radiating, and doing so seemed to have been the catalyst for everything else. She wanted that sense of belonging again, so much that she knew that it was unhealthy, but she couldn’t stop herself. “If I’m understanding you right, you’re saying that all you can do is act as a power source, while I have to direct how the power is used? Why couldn’t I do that until now?”
“That’s close enough to how it is,” Tyrus said. “There’s a lot more to it than that, but overall that’s what is happening. You couldn’t do it before because there was no channel for you to draw my power through. I was just pumping my strength into you, enhancing all of your natural talents, but doing so was incredibly inefficient. From what I could tell, your body’s normal element is stone, so when all you have is raw power with no aspect within you, you couldn’t do anything with it. The channel I created allows you to draw directly from my core and your body converts it instinctively to the correct element, wasting the vast majority of the power you draw, but allowing you to actually have control over what it does."
Pursing her lips, Sarena stepped forward and placed her left hand on the spire, maintaining her grip on Tyrus with the other. “This conversation isn’t over, but I need to eat and this monster is the only thing I’m going to find any time soon. If you’re right, breaking this spire should be easy."
Drawing on the warmth in her hand for the second time, she felt the world around her slow down. The sense of belonging returned instantly, filling her with a feeling of love and comfort that only her grandfather had let her feel before. Sarena simply stood there, basking in
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley