“We need to get Tide here to talk,” Terra said, seeing Mist with the ball of blood and the withered bodies on the ground. “Magi would be great too but that would take too much time.”
“There is no way we are going to be making a new volcano in the middle of the forest, no matter how small, just to talk to Magi. And as for Tide, how would she even get here?” We were a long way from the ocean.
“There is a small stream just a few minutes walk down the road.” Terra said as she started to melt into the ground “I will fetch her, wait for us at the stream.”
It would be pointless to try and call Terra back to talk it over, might as well do what she said and head to the stream. This was already becoming a bigger deal than I wanted to make of it.
I gave my companions a look over. Gray had a small cut on his arm but the bleeding had already stopped, just as Mist said. I do not know how she did it but the cut must have been healed by Mist. it was too big of a cut to be healed in just the two minutes it had been.
Physically the rest of my companions looked fine. Istan who was sitting with Mist on the horse was clearly shaken. It must not be pleasant seeing the blood close up. Emily was not much better. She had been taking care of Mist like she was her daughter but now she saw what Mist really was.
Now all that was left was for Faun, Terra, Tide and I to figure out what in the forest she was.
“Mist, can you do something about that ball of blood? It is freaking the horses…, and Istan, out.” Faun said, saving me from having to think of too many things at once.
“Alright,” Mist sighed, still clearly sulking about being forced to stop.
A small stream of blood began to break off the large ball and made its way to Mist’s Mouth. In a matter of seconds the whole ball had disappeared as Mist drank it.
Apparently that was not something pleasant to look at as all my mortal companions looked sick. I was just curious where all that blood went. It was many times larger than the size of her stomach.
Gray was the first of the mortals to ‘wake up’,“What do we do with him,” he asked, pointing at the spokesman for the bandits still laying on the ground. It seemed odd that he was changing the topic away from what I thought was the bigger issue, but I felt it was best not to pry.
“Let's just leave him.” I said, looking at the man laying in a puddle of his own making.
“What about the next people who come down this road?” Gray asked, looking over at this wife. I knew that the leader who had been hiding in the forest struck a nerve, wanting to take his wife and sell her as a slave.
Gray did have a good point but just killing the man did not feel right, even to me. Luckily Faun provided my answer once again, “I have a feeling he is rethinking his life choices right now.” She rode her horse up to the man and hopped down a few feet away. The man tried to crawl away from here, but it seemed like the fading adrenaline and shock had left his body unresponsive. In an uncharacteristically sweet voice Faun said, “It seems like you know what you were doing was wrong. We will give you one more chance.” Her eyes started to glow as I felt a small strand of power flow from Faun into the man. “We will know if you fall into your old ways. Do not waste this chance.”
Without another word Faun turned around, hopped on her horse and started to ride down the road. Once we were over the hill and out of sight of the man I caught up with her. “Do you have a way to keep track of animals from that far away?” I thought I had a good grasp of what Faun could do, and as far as I knew that was not one of her powers.
“No, I don’t” She smiled back at me.
“But,” I could not help but stammer.
“He does not need to know that.” I could not help but roll my eyes at Faun’s words but she had solved the issue quickly so I was not going to complain.
***
It was evening time before I felt power moving up the small river we had set our camp next to. It was not until the water started to rise that I realized there were two presences in the water. For a second I was worried that Flood would take after her namesake and inundate our camp, but a small swirl of her power directed the water harmlessly, at least for our campsite, around us. Most of our group was clearly impressed by the display of power, never having seen a water spirit in action before. But by the slight frown of Faun’s face I had to guess that several animals needed to find a new home. Which would be hard in what was now becoming the middle of winter. I was glad that Faun showed restraint for the timid naiad and kept her complaints to herself. It was not like Winter Floods Never happened anyways.
“Good to see you Flood. I was not expecting you to be here.” I greeted the naiad. There was a harumph from Tide because I did not greet her first but she will get over it. “And good evening to you too Tide,” I added after I felt some stares from my companions.
Flood was still a little timid and I could tell she was unsure on how to deal with Tide’s little tantrum but she did quietly say, “This creek eventually feeds into the same Delta as my river. Tide and I had been talking there in neutral waters before Terra showed up.”
“Where is Terra, I would have expected her to beat you here.” I then remembered our earlier conversation, “Don’t tell me she is trying to bring Magi?”
“She did say she wanted to talk to…”
I did not even wait for Tide to finish before I sent a wave of power into the ground. There was no way she was starting a volcano here. We were only a few days away from my woods now. And unless Terra and Magi have both gotten a lot better at control I might need to find a new home. Again!
As soon as I knew Terra was formed enough to hear me I called out, “You can not bring Magi here. If you really want to talk with her we can go to the mountains in the south, she can share with one of her sisters there.”
“She would not come,” Terra said with a sad look on her face. I did not sympathize with her. “She said something about Plants and animals don’t like her so why would Faun and Laurel?”
Magi did always have a violent personality, she switched between calm and explosive all too quickly. But I put, going to pay her a visit, on my mental todo list, which was much too long for my liking. Just because I did not like her burning my trees did not mean that I did not like her. If she really lost her temper she could make Fume’s burning of my woods seem miniscule.
Now was not the time to be worrying about Magi. It was time to have another conference of spirits in a… was it really only a month. These are not even supposed to happen every decade. Not like we were ever supposed to do anything outside keeping balance. We, or at least I, have not regularly met with anyone but Faun in a long time. Though it seems Faun has been meeting with Tide.
“So why did you call me all the way up this little creek?” Tide asked Terra, pulling me back out of my own thoughts. She was still a little huffy, from me cutting her off a moment ago.
“Mist has finally manifested her power.” Terra supplied, with a surprising amount of excitement in her voice.
“And…” Tide was eying us with the type of annoyance that was so her. I could not help the small smile from forming, seeing my two oldest companions at their same games. It did not make sense to be excited about blood. But it was something new, and it has been a long time since we have seen anything truly new. Most things happen so slowly for us that it never really seems new.
“She has the ability to…” I could not think of the best way to explain it. “Mist can you help? Maybe show them”
“I should be able to…” Mist closed her eyes to concentrate.
Emily rushed over from where she was finishing up her dinner prep. “We are not cutting anyone.”
Tide and Flood were shocked to see Emily so outspoken, but before they could respond Mist shouted in excitement.
We all looked at her to see a small stream of blood flowing out of puckered lips. A ball of blood glowing scarlet in the firelight was slowly growing in front of Mist.
Once again, no one was able to take their eyes off the scene. Though there was an obvious difference in the facial expression between the mortals and the spirits. There was silence for a minute as the ball continued to grow.
“Is this smaller than it was?” I could not help asking.
“My body absorbed a lot when I first inhaled, ingested, let's go with absorbed it. No, that is too repetitive. How would you be able to tell which type of absorbed I ment if I used absorbed for both.”
“Mist.” I called out to her, seeing her fall off the branch.
“Whatever, when the blood was inside me, the blood replenished the energy I was lacking, but after that I was absorbing it very slowly. Unless something changes this should be enough to last me several months.”
“But what will you do then?” Emily’s face was full of concern. “You can not…”
“Hunting is part of nature.” Faun said quietly, “Do you think other animal blood will work or does it have to be ‘human’?”
Mist’s eyes turned to the horses, Gray shot Mist some worrying looks. He had spent a lot of time taking care of the horses and had grown attached to them. But Mist was not trying to attack the horses; she was just looking at them with her spirit sight, presumably to see if she could sense the blood running through them.
“I should be able to but I have a feeling that I would need a lot more blood to maintain myself.” she eventually replied, turning back to Faun.
“Well it looks like we have a short term solution.” Faun sighed. I knew that to her a human's life was not worth any more than a deer and having to kill three deer versus one human probably really did not add up to her. But if you killed one deer the others did not band together and try hunting you down.
“But what do we call her now?” Tide aske
“We call her Mist!” I said with a little more strength than I meant to.
“That is not what I meant.” Tide Sighed. “She is no longer a water spirit. For some reason she did not turn into a naiad.”
“It does not matter. Mist is my friend and she will always be my friend. I also doubt that we are ever going to see the special conditions again that lead to her transforming into whatever she became.”
“You are likely right, but it would not hurt to give it a name, “ Tide stated. I was about to disagree when she continued, “Lets say there are more like Mist with power over blood. Do you want us to call them all Mists. You know names have power for us spirits, but even I do not know what would happen if Mist’s name started to be used like that.”
“I think we should call spirits like Mist Limia.” Terra said out of the blue
“Why Limia?” Emily asked. It was clear she was a little worried about what we would be calling her surrogate younger sister.
“No particular reason, I just liked the sound of it. That is how I came up with Dryad too.” Tera smiled. “It was not until many years later and Laurel grew the first tree that we named them drus.”
The mortels were looking puzzled at Terra’s statement. I could not help but roll my eyes after the absurdity of what was going on right now. Mother Earth talking to mortals about the origin of language. “Your language has changed much over the years. What humans first spoke you would no longer be able to understand.” I supplied. I tried to keep it short since it was a conversation that could take mortal lifetimes. Especially with Terra around. Much of language could be pointed back to her.
Terra surprisingly seemed happy to run with me trying to finish up our discussion on language. I thought she might want to delve into the history of languages more. But this situation must have been more fascinating to her. “Since so many of us are gathered there is one more thing I should point out. You might not have noticed since it is happening slower than the pace of your travels. But the strange residual energy after your battle with Maximus has not dissipated. If anything it is starting to grow and spread. We will need to keep an eye on things and see what happens.” With her words she looked towards Flood who had been sitting quietly off to the side.
“I can keep an eye on it,” was Flood’s timid reply.
“I am not saying that we should not keep an eye on it but why does it have you worried?” Faun said. “Almost no mortles can feel spiritual energy.”
“Does it mess with our powers?” I asked. If this energy kept us from absorbing the power of nature we would have to do something soon.
“It does not affect our powers.” Flood timidly added. She was probably the only spirit that had enough energy and control to have tested that since the battle.
“Then just let it be.” I said, too tired to care.
“Normally I would agree with you. But this mixture seems to be different. A few days ago I entered the city where you fought Maximus and I found a person with a small fire spark. It seems like he had a job of going around the city and starting fires in peoples stoves.” Terra said. There was a long pause, it stretched to the point that if I did not know her better I would have wondered if she was going to continue, but her dramatic pauses had a tendency to move at her time scale. I wondered what the mortal thought of her pauses but I knew that if I asked them now it would derail the conversation even more.
“From watching him I could see that this new spiritual energy in the air was being channeled with the energy coming from the man’s spark. It increased the power of his magic significantly.”
“Oh, what happened?” Mist bounced with excitement.
Terra smiled remembering something she obviously felt was funny. “I can tell you more later, but let's just say that he was lucky that none of the houses burnt down, or that he did not have to walk back home naked.”
“Back to the-” I started to say.
“-Woah, this new energy sounds intense. Did you come up with a name for this energy?” Mist asked. She clearly did not process my wanting to drop the subject.
Terra, unfortunately was more than happy to return to one of her favorite subjects. “I am still narrowing it down. I have a couple ideas that I am bouncing around.”
“Ooh. Tell me Tell me.” Mist bounced.
“I think my favorites are Either or Mana, but there are a few others I am still pondering over.”
“I was expecting them to be more similar, like Mana and Manga or something.”
“No, her ideas are always wildly different.” Tide said to which Faun and I could not help but nod.
“I think this is enough of naming things for tonight. And we know Mist can make it back to our pond before she needs to… feed again. I think we should call it a night and set out tomorrow. We will be home in just a few day, a week at most. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I need a rest.”
“But do we agree on what we call Mist.” Terra started to say as I let my powers spread into the trees.
