Double-Edged Sword

One couldn’t find as many astral rays when meditating in the Forest Plane, but there were some light green vortices of light. These were things Richard had never seen outside this plane, extremely unstable and short-lived. Attempts at capturing a few revealed that they were packed with life energy, so pure that it could not be absorbed effectively without a corresponding ability or meditation technique.

Only a small amount of the energy in these life vortices could be converted to mana, most just scattered away. On the other hand, his elven bloodline could absorb almost all of it, but getting these vortices all the way there before they faded away was not so simple. On the other hand, although the Archeron bloodline didn’t have an adverse reaction to this energy it could absorb very little itself. This was different from when he had meditated in the Archeron family tombs, where the elven bloodline had rejected...