Grey Realmheart 2, 1

And then I pushed. I didn’t try to form the aether, just expelled it from my core and body, sending a pulse of formeless, harmless aetheric particles out into the atmosphere. I struggled to keep my senses open from both directions, feeling the aether moving through the room while also watching the invisible mana particles move inside the aether realm.

I lost track of both. Resisting the urge to leave the keystone realm in pure frustration, I tried again, then again. I wasn’t sure how long I kept trying, with Ellie continuing to disturb the atmospheric mana in whatever ways she could think up.

Slowly, two opposing pictures formed in my mind.

One was the shape of the aether. The way it moved based on a fusion of its will and my own, but regardless of the physical space around me. Then there was the mana tied to individual elements, dormant until agitated by Ellie’s magic.

I understood how the aether moved, and I understood how the mana moved. No new insight to cultivate there. But where they interacted with each other...

The aether simultaneously contained and gave shape to the mana, and yet the mana continued to move exactly as expected of its nature.

Like a cognitive illusion, I realized. A picture that is two things at once, with the negative space of one image creating the other.

My perspective shifted. Suddenly I wasn’t just sensing the aether, but the shape of the mana in between it. The keystone realm realigned itself to my new perspective, and, between one breath and the next, everything changed.

Instead of an endless field of black nothing, I saw the rough shape of the grotto, painted in the colors of mana. Next to me, my sister glowed with it, all the elements being drawn in through her channels to be purified in her core.

The colors ran together, the scene disappearing into a spinning vortex of mana, with me at its center. Unlike the previous keystone, I didn’t feel the scouring sensation in my mind. Instead, I felt warmth spreading across my physical body, while at the same time a window opened in my head, letting golden light bathe my innermost thoughts.

My eyes fluttered open.

Ellie was staring at me, no longer casting her spells. I sensed for the godrunes. They were there, dormant, waiting for aether to touch them, give them life and purpose. And there was a new one, still warm against my skin.

I pushed aether into it.

“Whoa,” Ellie breathed. “You’ve got glowing purple tattoos under your eyes. That’s so cool.”

As before, my mind was filled with knowledge. This new godrune had a name, a purpose, a history, but it felt incomplete. Unlike before, it was not my understanding that was incomplete, but the djinn’s. I instinctively understood that they had not taken this aether art to its full potential. I could do more with it.

And so I abandoned the name it had come with. As my vision shifted and the atmospheric mana suffusing the cave appeared all around me, I decided what I would call this godrune.

Realmheart.