10) Realisation
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First off, the matter of losing energy during its last encounter with the mustelids!

The rock was questioning if it had always lost energy when experimenting on these kinds of novel creatures? The rock was forced into the conclusion that this must have been the case, because none of them had ever tried to run away, no matter how long the rock experimented on them.

Next, the rock wondered about the elemental which had suddenly appeared. How was it able to sneak up on the rock?

For this issue, the rock was able to think up three valid possibilities.

The first was that the opponent could camouflage and hide their energy-signature, which was unlikely, as the rock was not attacked before noticing the other elemental.

Another option was that the infiltrator had teleported in, which was more likely than the first option when considering that the other elemental had to reorient itself after porting in.

The last and most likely alternative was that there was a blind spot in the perception-ability used by the rock.

The next problem the rock encountered in its musing was that it did not know what the elemental wanted from the rock?

Normally it would have concluded that the mindless creature came to consume the rock's energies.

But then there was would have been no reason to leave the rock alive! Yet here it was alive and musing about the past happenings.

This was the most mindboggling of all the crazy things the rock had encountered in all its iterations. And no matter how long the rock thought about it, no answer would come. Irritated at leaving this question inconclusive the rock went to the next big question.

Namely, how it possibly could have lost to the other one!

Despite having less energy, the other elemental seemed to have greater control over the environment. Even the piece of environment the rock used as its exterior body. In conclusion, this meant that its greed for energy was very much unwarranted. And should immediately be exchanged for expansive greed for information. Alas, all attempts at information-gathering thus far had failed.

In addition, the rock chose the one method of attack it knew would be ineffective against this kind of enemy.

Satisfied with this explanation the last big miracle was to be analysed.

Where did the words originate?

The question itself was not as mindboggling as the one asking for the other elemental’s intentions. But that did not mean there would be more of a logical answer to it.

All it knew was that there was a sudden sensory stimulus. It did not even know the means of perception it had used.

It could rule out sounds, as it had not heard a sound ever since becoming a rock. It could also rule out electromagnetic waves, for the same reason. Having been spoken to directly in its mind was ruled out because as a proficient mind-mage it would have perceived such means way in advance.

So the rock of a mind-mage was left concluding that it must have been a great language skill invoked by some powerful figure somewhere on the continent.

But what could they have meant, by sending this message?

The mind-mage had never, in any of its iterations killed anyone even remotely related by blood. Another question without an answer.

To conclude its time of musing, the rock asked itself where it had been dropped off!

Acquiring the answer to this question seemed to be easy. All it had to do was wander about and check the kind of energy the local beings were made of.

Hoping to have been dropped into civilised lands was unreasonable so the rock tried not to.

But instead of answers, it found more confusion. There were a lot of elementals around. Mainly those without any kind of body. But aside from them, there were unreasonable amounts of undead and unundead roaming around.

This was the first time the rock's one perception-ability seemed superior to all the perception-abilities it remembered from its previous iterations combined.

Unundead were seemingly mindless killers, physically indistinguishable from living creatures. If you were insistent on finding a difference, the unundead had fewer blemishes than living ones. Remembering how rich youngsters would request dangerous expeditions into the ROT just to find and capture these mindless things, stirred the rock into hatred for the beings around. And that was without it remembering what they were used for.

On the contrary, looking at the tattered bodies of the undead was almost soothing.

Neither the undead nor the unundead bothered engaging the elemental, while happily keeping to their own. Killing each other. Undead vs undead. Unundead vs unundead.

The rock had to swallow its hatred and stop itself from taking in their energy, in order to prevent becoming a target of this segregated killing. So, it kept to the local rules and restricted itself to consuming elementals.

 


 

The rock was happily eating away at a bunch of elementals. Trying to ignore their cries of pain.

“Stop killing your brethren! Do you have no pride?”

Confused at perceiving something quite similar to that time, the rock stopped eating.

Concentrating on its surroundings, it found another elemental close by. Not quite attacking, but not doing anything else either.

The elemental, proficient in mind-magic, invaded the other one’s soul. Soon after, its perception was back to being imprisoned in its own body. And the other elemental carried the mind-mage off.

Waking up the rock was even more confused than last time. A lot of the energy it had painstakingly collected was gone again. It did not know if the other elemental took it, or if the energy just naturally dispersed because the mind-mage had been unconscious for an extended period of time.

The emergence of this strange voice was coinciding with the appearance of another elemental with the same strange behaviour.

Could it be that someone was controlling the elementals? And could it be that this someone was using this region as some kind of breeding-facility to produce an army?

If this was true that would answer all the incongruencies.

The rock would have to find out next time. Which would only be possible if it found out how to respond!

But that gave rise to a new question. How do these things reproduce? It was quite a dilemma. The rock did not want to live the rest of its life as a celibate.

Finding itself still surrounded by undead and unundead, the rock aimlessly wandered around.

 


 

The next time the rock found some elementals, it decided to observe their behaviour. For the most part, they were doing nothing, other than absorbing ambient energy. Sometimes they flared up in activity to manipulate their surroundings and steer more energy towards themselves.

Offering the hated things some elemental energy, they greedily ate it up. The observing rock perceived gratefulness and happiness from the little rocks.

Having lost interest in the beings, the rock left them alone. As it accelerated its muddy body, two of the bodiless elementals formed gaseous shells around their rock-selves and followed behind.

The rock mostly ignored its entourage. Silently and aimlessly wandering around.

After some time, it remembered that it wanted to experiment on communication. And this unwelcome entourage was as good a subject as any rock.

Trying to invoke sound predictably failed.

Speaking into their minds just scared them.

The mind-mage tried a hundred other odd ideas, all of which failed.

The rock got bored and took a break from its experiments.

It wanted to meet the one who controlled the elementals. This caused the two members of its entourage to act.

The two ran off, not in a panic, but another kind of urgency.

The rock did not pay this action any mind and continued idly thinking about what to do next.

It did not take long for the two young elementals to return with a much stronger one in tow.

The youngsters led the old one to the spot they had split up with the mind-mage. Without wasting time they quickly followed the muddy one's path.

Perceiving three elementals on its proverbial tail the rock stopped moving and waited for them to catch up.

“So, you are finally willing to talk?”

All the elemental could react with was being confused about multiple things.

First was the fact that the two elementals did what it wanted to be done.

Another was the fact that whoever controlled the elementals seemed to only speak through strong ones.

And then there was the fact that the mind-mage still did not know how to convey information to the person behind the elementals.

“Why do you think we are controlled by anyone? Is freedom not a concept taught to your kind?”

Now the mind-mage was completely lost, due to the incongruence from common sense.

These things had sapience!?

And they knew about its previous iterations!?

This revelation forced the talkative element into silent shock!

It knew the humanoids of the desert as aggressive and unyielding. But this closedmindedness and lack of knowledge was something it had never expected.

The mind-mage thought hard about a way to communicate with the other being. As it wanted to deny the notion of its previous iteration having once belonged to the desert-tribes.

“Aren’t we already in the midst of a conversation? What does this interaction lack in order to be considered a conversation by your people?”

To this, the mind-mage had no answer. The rarity in front of it was right! Both sides of the interaction understood the other’s intentions, thus all conditions of a conversation were fulfilled.

The single most baffling fact of this situation was that the elementals had never tried to communicate with the flesh-based lifeforms.

“Our people have diplomatic ties to a lot of fleshy ones! Else we would not have been able to acquire this piece of land, would we?”

The mind-mage began to question everything it knew about the six regions of the continent. What kind of people would willingly live within the ROT? Amongst the undead and unundead?!

“Obviously undead and unundead people!”

This fact broke the mind-mage completely and the conversation was paused for multiple hours.

Then the mind-mage sarcastically thought to itself that the next thing the other would talk about could be sapient rockeaters and semis.

“Well, of course, these exist as well!”

This kind of information was almost too much for the mind of the mind-mage to handle. The only thing preventing the mind-mage from attacking the other elemental, out of sheer confusion, was the memory of how the last two confrontations with talking elementals went down. It was not even sure if the three were the same or three different beings, or if two of them were the same and the third another.

“There are quite a lot of us!”

Forcing itself to put a sane thought together, the mind-mage asked itself what all these elementals were doing and if it would be forced to join them.

“I can only talk for myself; I am close to creating my first batch of offspring. And will not force you to join me!”

This notion reminded the genocidal one of one very specific and pressing question it had: How did elementals reproduce.

“It’s quite simple, you only need to collect twelve different types of energy. Once combined in a certain ratio they will condense and form a new being!”

This explanation was too vague for the mind-mage. It did not even know how many energies it was currently made up of. And it was confused that no matter what kinds of energies were mixed it always resulted in these rocks. Before the other one could form a cohesive thought to answer the mind mage had one more question to add. Had these strange elemental animals also been created this way?

“That would be the magic of life. But not all of these rocks, as you call them, are equal. Passively they can only gather the energies used to create them. That means the speed of growth in their early stages is defined by what energies were used to create them and what energies are freely available at the location they live in. Regarding the elemental animals, I do not know much. All I can say is that it was a project of the protector. To make this land resemble home!”

Now the elemental had to think about what would happen if none of these twelve energies was elemental in nature. Where these sentient elementals came from and who that 'protector' would be?

“To my knowledge, nobody has tried that yet. The most uncommon one I know about has two different non-elemental energies, for a grand total of 99.99% of total energy. That is what you are!”

Having decided that it had explained enough the elemental that had not yet tried its hands at genocide left, leaving the adult mind-mage and its entourage of two behind.

What is your least favorite chapter, so far?
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