After a few days of aimlessly strolling through the lands, the mind-mage realised that depending on the situation its two followers changed the material makeup of their exterior bodies. Whereas it always kept to its muddy exterior.
This spiked the sapient elemental’s interest.
Walking around and observing its entourage the mind-mage found that they gradually changed their exterior to match the ambient energy-mixture.
Trying so itself, it realised that this increased the rate of energy-intake from ambient energies.
Checking back on its mud-body the elemental realised that it mainly received water-energy, other fluidic energy and energies related to different kinds of rock.
While lying around without an exterior body, it felt all energies enter into its core unfiltered.
The next step was finding out how different kinds of energies interacted with each other.
Feeding the elementals a certain kind of energy, had an immediate effect, the exterior changed to match the incoming kind of energy more closely.
Feeling like its energies were abundant and mostly useless, the mind-mage experienced with feeding the two different kinds of energies and observing the interactions that occurred.
Feeding one of them endothermic energy and the other one exothermic energy created a massive body of whirling wind between them.
When one was fed exothermic energy and the other was fed fluidic energy a harmless fog was created. In most cases! Some fluidic energies resulted in poisonous, acidic or alkaline fog. Some of the more potent acidic and alkaline fogs even began to eat away at the rocky cores of the elementals.
One elemental getting fiery energy while the other got pressure energy caused an explosion to occur between them. The mind mage decided to stop experimenting with this combination after one specific mixture of pressure-energies almost resulted in the obliteration of its two experimental subjects.
Endothermic energy combined with fluidic one created some form of ice.
The rock was fascinated with the versatility of elemental magics and continued happily experimenting away while aimlessly walking across the ROT.
Fiery energy and fluidic energy led to fog, but the energy expenditure was far greater than the earlier experiment which resulted in fog.
Then there were the energies closely related to solids like metal or stones. Many of the combinations did not result in anything noteworthy.
Many metallic energies showed some kind of reaction when combined with water-energy and certain kinds of pressure-energies, creating either rust, ores, gems or stones.
When energies related to stones reacted with water they mostly resulted in some kind of muddy substance.
Recreating the energy-mixture which resulted in mud, feeding it to one of the elementals and feeding the other fiery or exothermic energy resulted in rocks.
Combining rust with fire created metal, but the same was not true when combining rust with exothermic energy.
Feeding each of the two elementals electrical charge of opposing polarity resulted in lighting strikes firing from the negative one and striking the positive one.
Collecting a few more elementals the mind-mage continued to experiment, trying to create useful effects. And whenever it found one such useful effect it would test similar conditions to maximise the energy efficiency and test further to maximise the effectiveness. Effectively creating two arrangements for each effect.
Whenever it was content with the result, it would periodically train to recreate this exact effect in as short a time as possible and with as little interference from itself.
This continued until the group arrived at a massive body of water.
Immediately the experimental mood of the adult elemental vanished and was replaced with joy.
After having its exterior body spit its gem-form into the sea, the mind-mage lead its cohort of young elementals on an expedition to get to the other side.
Swimming as this kind of existence was not especially hard. All the elementals had to do was manipulate the water in a way which led to them gaining momentum. For that matter, swimming through the air would not have been much more complicated, but more energy-intensive.
For navigation purposes, the mind-mage used the plane where the medium changed from water to air as a point of reference. The elementals could easily recognize this plane by the sudden change of energy-make-up from fluidic, interspersed with a type of energy it could recognise, to pressure-energies.
As the ambient air above the water filled with the energies of a forest, the mind-mage steered due north. But as the group of elementals made landfall, they still came out in the southern Wilderlands instead of the intended target, which was the desert.
Annoyed at having gone way too far south, the elemental cut down a few trees, with highly compressed blades of different elemental properties.
Making noise outside of society was never a good idea, at least that was the case if you did not want to be attacked by the closest predator or as in this case, the closest overprotective mother.
The elementals had no intention of fighting the scared boar. And even though they immediately retreated into the water, in its initial charge the boar had impaled one of their kind.
The impaled rock broke apart, and the energy within started to dissipate.
Strangely enough, the mind-mage felt loss over the death of this being. It remembered hating their kind over the course of multiple lives, yet now it was sad about the destruction of this one individual rock.
Wallowing in despair the mind-mage led its group northwards through the water.
When they came upon the sands of the desert, the mind mage had its crew remain underground. Likewise, it also remained underground while moving through the sand.
Not knowing how much time had gone by, the group of elementals came upon a fountain, as the locals so caringly called it.
The mind-mage was intrigued by this unique approach on one of these infinite sources of water.
From its new perspective, the fountain looked less like a natural occurrence and more like an artificial death trap. This unusual way of looking at the waters also revealed that within the water were multiple organic energies.
So it decided to inspect the source of the structure. It navigated along the long tunnel of water extending from the fountain down into the earth.
Diving through the sands for hours on end, the mind-mage of an elemental started to doubt that even the desert was natural.
As it came closer to the source of the fountain it perceived multiple other tunnels of water, likely leading to other fountains.
The tunnels of water all converged in a single gigantic gem.
“Hello, child!”
The mind-mage began to hate the fact that seemingly everybody could talk directly into its mind.
Wondering what the hell the thing was, the kept its distance. Mostly due to it being able to talk into the rock’s mind, but also because the monolith contained massive amounts of energy.
“Well, the most fitting description would be ‘corpse’!”
The mind-mage was pretty sure that everything referring to itself as a corpse would be anything but.
“Are you familiar with the concept of seals?”
Indeed the rock was familiar with seals. They were used to get rid of anything that was either impossible to kill or was likely to have some kind of returning from any other killing-method at your disposal.
They were also viable if one was forced into a fight with a being one could not realistically win against in any other way.
There were even rumours of sealing-specialists. If these were true, then a third reason was viable, namely energy-efficiency.
The individuals most often affected by seals were gods and powerful culters.
“That is about right, and exactly what happened to me!”
The mind-mage was confused as to how a sealed being could create so many traps and even more confused about the fact that one such sealed creature was able to communicate with the outside world.
“These things you call fountains are part of the seal, they constantly drain my energy. And communication is possible, I just don’t know why!”
The mind-mage was interested in what the other being had been prior to becoming a ‘corpse’, as well as what it would be able to offer for an attempt at freeing the powerful being.
“I doubt one such as you could break a seal such as this one! I stem from the great Yen-Dynasty of the Tesin!”
If the other was not going to offer anything on their own the mind-mage would not go out of its way to try and help a stranger.
Especially since the mind-mage had never even heard of the being's species, not to mention the dynasty it claimed to hail from.
Yet it began to wonder what kind of physical form the Tesin had.
“It must have been quite some time for someone to never have even heard of us. Our form is whichever we desire!”
That would eliminate most options. It would leave dungeons, elementals, and beasts. The mind-mage was not sure about monsters and rockeaters, because although they came in many forms and shapes, they seemed to be bound to their own physical appearance.
Due to the energetical make-up of the being in front of the rock it was unlikely to be related to elementals, dungeons or rockeaters.
Meaning the most likely option was that the sealed creature was from some kind of extinct species. The second-most likely option was that they were living in hiding somewhere in the Wilderlands or among the eastern nations.
“Tell me, do you know who the oldest active being on the continent is right now?”
There were some gods who must have come close to ten millennia of age. But as it just recently came to know of the civilisations of non-humanoids there may be much older beings around.
“Humanoids? What kind of humanoids are there, in this day and age?”
The mind-mage knew of the desert-tribes who referred to themselves as Chifu, the eastern nations who detested being seen as one group of people, and the Dolain of the twelve free cities. Well, the last century or two they were not so free, but that was beside the point.
And as it had recently learned of them, the rock would not forget to mention the undead and unundead of the ROT. Even though the mind-mage found it unlikely that there were any tribes to them.
Lastly, there were multiple humanoid factions in the Wilderlands, but the elemental had never heard of them engaging in diplomatic behaviour, at least not with anyone outside their jungle.
“Never heard of any of them!”
The elemental was briefly confused about the other being not even having heard about the undead and unundead! But soon after decided that there was nothing to be gained from this interaction and started to ascend back through the sands!
“Before you leave, I have a request. Would you be willing to become a priest of mine?”
As the rock was already a mind-mage and being an elemental effectively made it a destructor, it would rather not add another burden on its soul.
“No such thing would occur. I am Merafinger and in my time I was the god of a small nation in the vast central jungle. So, with my knowledge and experience about priests, becoming a priest of mine would not be a burden at all.”
The most confusing thing about this sales pitch was that since the beginning of written history, the contested lands, have been a desert. No jungle came even close to the centrum of the continent.
The only noteworthy jungle was the southern Wilderlands.
“That is sad news, but completely beside the point. My argument is that I am an experienced and powerful god, and being my only active priest would give you a monopoly on this power!”
The rock was adverse to the idea, but as long as it was spared from becoming a talal, there should be basically no responsibility of faith placed on him, so whatever the rock agreed.
The process of becoming a priest to the mighty Merafinger was alarmingly easy. All the rock had to do was pray to its new god. Merafinger then used the divine link created by the prayer, to place a fragment of its own soul inside of the rock’s soul.
“Now whenever you feel like talking, you can just pray to me and I will respond.”
The rock could already see this becoming useful very soon.
Yet on the information-gathering front, the only interesting thing the mind-mage could take away from this conversation was being one step closer to understanding how the desert tribes could sustain themselves with only the fountain-waters.
