Burning Plains, Pt 7

You sit in the hammock in relative peace, immersed deeply in your Chakra. With your psionic energies enveloping the space around you, you're able to keep the shed conditioned and cool. At least, to some degree. Of course it takes you some time to get to this state, hours in fact. It's basically a little past noon before the room's temperature isn't just bearable - it's actually comfortable.

Although there's very little wind and air movement inside here, it's still much preferable to what's going on outside. Out there, it's practically a torrent of flame from the middle distance onward, for as far as you can see. 

The sheer heat radiating from the sun is more than enough to allow things that have already been charred to catch alight again. And this has caused numerous fires to spread everywhere, all around. What were mere patches of flame earlier in the morning have become large swaths of raging fire. 

Though this worries you to some degree, you're certainly glad that the farmstead itself is still relatively safe. Only a few fires have lit up close to you - specifically at some of the singed cropland nearby. 

You hope none get too close to endanger you.

Though if the flames do get closer, you have some idea how to possibly snuff them out - a directed blast of air could be enough to suffocate a fire. Much like a thick blanket, or a blast of carbon dioxide from a fire extinguisher. As long as you're able to use your Telekinesis, you can stave off the flames.

Then again, you'd be blasting it with regular air which has regular oxygen in it - you could end up making things worse. Although you'd certainly like to test things out, you find that you don't exactly have the energy to do so. 

Your physical body is resting nicely while you're in your Chakra, and is recharging itself easily. But your psionic energies are rather strained in contrast. 

Maintaining the seal itself is incredibly taxing, especially at first. You've certainly been able to refine your process and become a little more efficient at condensing all these particles in the atmosphere around you. And the longer you do this, the more you find ways to smooth out your process even more, or find shortcuts in the flow of energy, or refining your thoughts, and so on. 

As a result, you've become much more adept at elevating and improving your powers with every moment that passes, though what you're doing now is still far from easy. You've still spent most of the day controlling the pressure seal inside the entire shed, which has most certainly used up quite a bit of your reserves. 

Even with your superior regenerative abilities in the Chakra, you're barely able to recover your energies faster than you use them up. As a result, your energies are half depleted, and rising ever so slowly. Too slowly to even notice, honestly.

But you think this is fine, at least for now. You've come to a kind of equilibrium at this point in time, and can always recharge your energies back to full once you get back to traveling at night. It'll be relatively quiet like always, and you'll have plenty of time to recharge.

After all, you couldn't possibly run into anything remotely dangerous while in the middle of this scorched valley. Well, nothing alive anyway. As your senses have revealed to you, there's nothing out here for as far as you can see.

The only thing that could possibly be unaffected by the ocean of flame all around you is a Shadow Sweeper. To you, it's a being that seems to exist on another plane altogether, and is only in yours partially. Since its body won't likely be affected by fire, it could reasonably exist out here, thus making it a potential threat to you.

Should you run into one, you could just run your ass off. Sure, you were able to beat one in your dreams, but that was with an empowered Kaja at your side. It took the both of you to destroy it, and doing so depleted almost all your energies.

And although Noir is with you and she could help, she's far from being able to do what Kaja could. In fact, the both of you combined don't have the raw Telekinetic power that she did. So you could possibly cripple a Sweeper, but you couldn't defeat it. Not by a long shot.

Not that you expect any Sweepers out here in the first place. For one thing, there's nothing here to "sweep". There's nothing for them to cull and destroy and uncreate. Without anything to draw them here, save yourself and Noir, there's no need for them to be here.

You decide to stop dwelling on potential fatal encounters and turn your mind back towards the shed itself. Focusing on the negative will only stress your mind and body more than it needs to, maybe even causing you to lose energy rather than regenerating it.

While you refocus your thoughts to lean more positively, it dawns on you that perhaps you don't need to make this atmospheric bubble quite so large. It's not as though the accounting shelves need shelter from the heat, or anything else inside for that matter. The tools, the tractor, the desk - none of these things are necessary for your survival, or for anyone's. Keeping them 'cool' does nothing but make you work harder. 

Now the bags of soil and the crates of seeds could be kept cooler, maybe. But truthfully, you're not exactly about to use any of those. And besides, they've already been slowly cooking in this heat for who knows how long now - sheltering them for a day won't make a dent in their ultimate degeneration.

Truly, the only things that actually need protection from the intense heat are yourself and Noir.

And so you slowly draw the bubble back inwards, carefully allowing only some of the inside air to escape. This keeps the atmosphere around you cool even further without being too dense. In fact, having a little too much concentrated oxygen will only make you loopy and out of sorts. Maybe even sick.

That's the last thing you want.

It takes you a dozen or so minutes before the bubble is small enough to fit you and Noir comfortably - perhaps three or four meters in diameter. Though there has been little change in regards to how tranquil it is inside, your energy usage has changed drastically. 

The simple act of reducing your needs has also reduced your burden. Which makes total sense of course, and you chide yourself for your foolish wastefulness earlier. You had been operating under an old world assumption - that an entire room needs to be conditioned for your comfort. Of course, such notions are nonsensical now, and you need to learn how to shed them faster. Clinging on to those old habits will only make life harder for you.

Regardless, you learn this particular lesson quickly enough. And it couldn't come at a better time - you sense your energies refilling much faster than before, especially now that you're not using so much of it to maintain empty space.

Your mind turns towards perhaps moving the atmospheric bubble around, so that you could keep your air cool as you travel. Being able to do that would be quite a huge benefit, and so you end up practicing a little bit right here and now.

What you do isn't much, honestly speaking - simply moving the bubble in a small circle by mere centimeters while keeping yourself inside it. It moves slowly, and it takes you quite a bit of energy to accomplish.

But it moves, and that's all that matters right now. If you can move it, then you can travel with it. All you need to do is practice.

Before you can learn much however, a ripple of psionic energy flares out in the distance, which you feel sharply through your Chakra. A potent thought swirls into being roughly a kilometer or two northwards, one that's acute and defined and, to be frank, terrifying. 

It's almost like a tornado coming to life, wherein it draws energies towards a specific point from every angle around it. But instead of wind and rain and debris, it's particles of thought and emotion gathering in one spot.

That forming thought deepens and brightens at the same time, and with it comes a wild emotion that radiates outward powerfully. To you, it feels raw and pure and happy, which besieges you with feelings of freedom - the kind that comes after an eternity of confinement. 

There's an explosiveness and excitement to it all, which makes you wonder what exactly is happening out there.

As these thoughts and emotions gather together, you realize that there's some vast consciousness building itself together seemingly out of the ether. Almost as though it had previously been scattered, and is now bringing itself to a concentrated fruition.

It takes a few protracted moments to do so, but once it gathers itself together there's a wild burst of energy that sweeps outwards, enough that you can almost feel it strike your skin, as far away as you are. There's also a kind of 'brightness' within the Chakra, and you're unable to perceive it if only for a moment.

But once that burst fades, you find that a powerful psionic presence has solidified in its place. All manner of emotions flow through it with much more definition and dimension - most are of joy and happiness and excitement and giddiness. 

It all reminds you of an animal freed from its cage. Where something like a dog would hop up and run around, this thing instead pulses outwards with its formidable psyche. The way its energies move makes you feel as though it's… dancing?

The being seems to move around in little circles, occasionally switching directions and waving around in the air, as though it's doing some kind of ritual.

Then you realize that the temperature around you has increased to some degree, even inside your bubble. When you take a quick peek with your physical body, you see the flames in the croplands rise higher than ever before. 

Fear sweeps through your body as you try to figure out what that presence is. It can't possibly be some kind of animal - no way could it survive out there with such potent flames. Whatever this thing is seems to not only survive, but completely thrive in the midst of it all.

It's literally dancing with happiness in what you presume is the middle of an ocean of fire. Clearly, this thing is in its element.

Even worse than that, it goes completely still suddenly the moment its presence faces your direction, as though it has noticed you. All of its joy and happiness and positive emotions sweep away in an instant. Replacing them are torrents of surprise and disgust, the same levels of emotions you would feel towards seeing mold on your food, or some kind of insect in your shoe.

Your heart thumps heavily in your chest when you feel the presence gather itself up and swell significantly, then it actually moves in your direction. And actually, moving is such a painfully slow word to use - this thing is cruising, practically rushing in your direction.

Faster than anything else you've ever come across during your travels.

You force your physical body to rise up from your meditative Chakra even though it's far from fully recharged, and at the same time you alert Noir and wake her Telepathically. You spin up a Network and invite her before she's aware of what's going on, or even before she's fully conscious.

Your own consciousness re-enters your body in time, just as that frightful presence shows itself right on your doorstep within a blink of an eye. And what you see fills you with absolute dread, causing the hairs on your arms to stick up on end. More than that, you almost physically fall out of your hammock, as your body subconsciously attempts to run backwards.

The creature's body (if you could call it that) twists and turns exactly like a 3-meter tall tornado. But instead of a swirling mass of water, dust, and debris, this one is made purely of fire. Its violent flames spin and twirl all around it, causing the already-charred ground it's touching to catch alight. 

Not only do you feel waves of dry heat pierce through your atmospheric bubble, but also powerful streams of psionic energy too. Both seem to whip at you, even despite the fact that it's seemingly keeping its distance, enough for you to feel painful stings on your own psyche.

The Ifrit appears to be studying you with equal levels of curiosity and disgust, as though you're some unknown vermin that's made your way into its home. As though it's trying to figure out the best way to deal with you.

And then, it lashes at you with a cascade of psionically-infused flame, intending to utterly annihilate you from existence.