Chapter 2, Alien eggs are weird

Jacob followed Alerd down some stairs to a small kitchen. It, like the rest of the log house, was simply furnished, having only a small wooden table with two benches on opposite sides, and an old fashioned stove with a fire burning inside. What surprised Jacob was the sink, there was a tap through which flowing water came through, and one of the cabinets lining the wall was cold inside. The technology might not be as primitive as he feared.

From one cabinet Alerd took out a flat metal rectangle, and from the wooden fridge he took out a smooth black sphere the size of a fist. He placed the rectangle on the hot stove, placed the black sphere on it, pulled a knife from his pocket and popped the sphere. It was like an egg, a soft spherical black egg, filled with a viscous clear blue fluid and a white yolk. It smelled oddly appetizing.

"What's that?" Jacob asked.

"Abloid egg, we've got a small coop next to the house. They're a great source for daily food and their milk is delicious."

It didn't take long before Alerd grabbed the hot metal pan with his bare hands, and laid it on the table in front of Jacob. He then fetched what looked like a two pronged spork, along with a wooden mug that he filled with water from the tap.

Jacob thanked him, before taking a small piece of the cooked blue egg and taking a small taste. He let it sit in his mouth, tasting it and making sure it didn't itch, in case the egg wasn't edible to humans. The taste was something he couldn't describe well, it felt like a flat piece of cooked mushrooms, but the taste was something more like raw beef seasoned with blueberries and liquorish. It wasn't very good, but it was edible.

After taking a few more bites, Jacob grabbed the wooden mug, and took a gulp. It was weird, almost as if he was drinking water in a dream, rather than actually drinking it. He paused before turning to Alerd with a questioning look.

"The water isn't as real as you, but it does have a fading time of about a year, so it should be fine." Alerd answered before Jacob could ask anything.

Jacob once again wondered why Alerd was talking about how real something was. "About that, what do you mean by 'more real'?"

Alerd smiled, but then he noticed that Jacob wasn't smiling back, he looked more confused than anything. "Yer kidding me. Haven't ye gone to school? It's the very basics of essence theory."

"I have, but they never taught that anything would be more real than something else, except maybe false information. I haven't even heard of any subject called essence theory."

"Bah, must've been a poor school ye went to, not even teaching the basics of how the world works."

"I learned plenty. Better grades in physics, math and chemistry than anyone else."

Alerd gave Jacob a curious look, "I have no idea what two of those even are. But if yer so confident, go on and tell me what this table is made of."

"I feel like you're asking a trick question. It's wood, a bunch of atoms all jumbled together. Or a big amount of protons neutrons and electrons."

"Ye shouldn't make up words to make yerself look smarter. As everyone should learn in school, the table, like everything else, is made from essence. It's raw essence given the aspects of wood, and table."

Seeing Jacob's puzzled and unbelieving expression, Alerd sighed before elaborating. "Just like this fire, is raw essence given the aspects of fire, and flame," he said, lifting his right arm up, and creating a small flame out of thin air.

It was at that moment, that the most important thought of Jacob's life came to be in his mind. He already knew he wasn't on earth, having seen the two suns and unfamiliar flora earlier, but what if his situation was worse than that. What if he was in a completely different universe. One where the laws of physics were different, allowing people to create flames, and possibly more, out of thin air on a whim. He was lucky that his body even worked with the different laws of physics. But the thought, while terrifying, gave him hope.

If the so called 'raw essence' could be changed into fire, and if the table also was made from essence, he should be able to make a table from raw essence too. What were the limits, and would it be possible to use it to make some sort of portal or wormhole back to earth. To do that, Jacob had to figure out the limits of what what was possible in this new reality he was in.

"So... I may have just realized that everything I've ever learned might be wrong. Would you mind giving me a crash course on everything, maybe starting with what essence and aspects are?"

"Eh, sure. No problem. Haven't got anything else to currently. Heiran, ye want to listen too, or did ye learn it in school already?"

Taking Heiran quickly running out of the room as her answer, Alerd started to explain.

"Well, I ain't a teacher, so can't promise a good explanation, but for starters, essence is like the brick that is used to build everything. In it's raw form it's practically nothing, but it can gain aspects which change what it is. Aspects can be nearly anything, be it love, fire or movement, if you can think it, it is an aspect. Add a water aspect to raw essence, meaning essence without any aspects, and you get water essence, commonly known as water."

"Alright, that kinda makes sense. So for the fire earlier, you somehow added a fire aspect to raw essence?"

Alerd nodded, "pretty much."

"But that doesn't explain why you said that the water is less real than I am."

"Well, ye see, essence can have multiple aspects. For example, ye can have fire essence with just a fire aspect, or ye can have fire essence with light, heat and gas aspects. They're pretty much the same thing, one just has three aspects instead of one. The more aspects something has, the more real it is. It feels more real to the mind, and lasts longer before the aspects fade away turning the Essence into raw essence. Essence with just one aspect feels more like a bad crayon drawing, and lasts barely a second, while something with say ten aspects feels like a good painting and can last for a tad over 17 minutes."

"And for whatever reason, I feel more real than that?"

"Yes, yer essence feels more real than reality itself. It's why I thought ye were a sage at first, since ye would have to be a sage to add so many aspects to reality."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there are many ways to add aspects to essence, like runes, hand symbols or just thought, but there's a few things making it harder to add more aspects to essence.

The first is understanding the aspects of the essence. Ye might know that water is water, and make water essence with one aspect, or ye might know that water is a cold slightly sticky liquid, making water essence with three aspects. The more ye understand, the more aspects ye can use to get the essence ye want."

Jacob nodded in contemplation, "And being able to accurately separate something to over 60 individual concepts might be difficult."

"Difficult! It's nearly impossible."

"Alright, maybe. But what about the other two reasons?"

"Well, there's actually being able to manipulate essence with many aspects. Ye need a good amount of experience just to manipulate essence, and the more aspects it has, the harder it is. Ye can learn to manipulate specific types of essence with practice, but learning to manipulate water with ease, doesn't mean ye have the same skills with all types of essence.

Then there's the amount of raw essence ye need to even add a single aspect to reality. To add aspects to essence, the essence needs to be squeezed. Take raw essence and squeeze it enough, and ye can give it a single aspect. Squeeze that even more, and you can add a second. Adding aspects to reality needs very good essence manipulation, and a whole lot of raw essence, to squeeze enough essence together."

"Ok, but what does this have to do with why you thought I was a sage?"

"Yer more curious than a toddler. A sage is someone with enough skill to manipulate reality itself. Yer body felt more real that I feel to myself, so I thought ye must be a sage to have so many aspects. Ye also look odd, not ugly mind ye, just different. Sages like to change their bodies with limbs made from water or other some such, to show their skill to the world. So I thought ye just had an odd fashion sense. It's also why I called ye milord, most sages are lord's around here, and I didn't want to accidentally offend ye enough for ye to remove me from existence."

Jacob wasn't entirely sure he had fully understood everything that Alerd had explained about essence and aspects, but he was confident in one thing. Essence manipulation was basically magic, and he wanted to learn. Not just because it was potentially his best path back home, but also because it was magic. It sounded like throwing fireballs and enchanting swords was a possibility, and who wouldn't want to learn what they could.

"Thank you, for explaining this to me. Now, where can I learn to manipulate essence?"

Alerd only smiled in response.