Overview
The Element-Sense Elemental is the shape of the element itself — a column of orange-gold flame with a face that is only a suggestion, a white-hot core where the face should be, and a heat that reads as a person at a distance and as a landscape up close. It is the truest ear of the elemental line: the being that feels the Veil thinning a day before it opens, and the feeling is not a choice. There is no will in it beyond the element and no drive beyond the burn, but the feeling arrives anyway, and the feeling is not a choice.
Habitat
It lives on The Elemental Planes, the eight raw planes of fire, water, earth, air, poison, venom, dark, and light, where the element is the only law and the plane the only clock. It keeps the veil-line, because that is where the thinning is earliest and the feeling earns its keep, and because an elemental that leaves the veil-line is an elemental that has forgotten the fire. The mighty keep the deep planes and the wisps keep the openings, but the Element-Sense keeps the veil-line and does not stop feeling.
Appearance
The silhouette is the shape of the element itself — a column of orange-gold flame with a face that is only a suggestion. An Element-Sense reads 2.74 m tall and carries 187 kg of shaped flame, built broad through the column and hot through the core. The body is a deep ember-orange to a true, clean gold at the crest, with a faint, almost imperceptible pulse to the edges. The mark is the white-hot core where the eyes should be — the only true color in the face, the whole of the warning, and the not-seeing is the whole of the peace.
Behaviour
It moves at 13.7 m/s across the stone, deliberate, because the burn does not hurry and the being has nothing to do but feel. It does not hunt by the mouth; it hunts by the thinning — the Veil is felt a day before it opens, and the drive is taken the way a fire takes the air, breath by breath. When the thinning comes — a day before it opens, never a moment after — the white-hot core runs bright and the being burns a degree harder, the way a hand holds a blade. It heals by the element: a wound of a type the plane does not recognize simply stops being a wound, and the not-recognition is the whole of the healing.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The burn is the whole of the weapon — a drive felt across the veil-line that lands on the being and keeps the plane's faith for a lifetime. There is no strike beyond the burn and no defense beyond the element: the body is a deep ember-orange to a true, clean gold, as hard as the fire that keeps it, and the white-hot core holds the word the way the stone holds the debt. An Element-Sense that is harmed does not burn in the way the plane does not recognize — the harm simply stops being a harm, and the stopping is the whole of the healing.
Magic Alignment
Its line belongs to fire-storm, the drive, the patient, precise holding of the element across the plane. The Element-Sense carries the line's truest named inborn, Element-Sense — it can feel the Veil thinning a day before it opens, and the feeling is not a choice. It also carries Shape-Hold, the line's body, which is not a choice either, because an elemental that could not hold its shape against the wind, the water, and the doubt would not be an elemental of the plane. Its signature power is the Avatar Voice: the plane's voice, spoken in a drive that keeps the word.
Society
There is no society in it, and the not-having is the whole of the shape. The elementals of the plane speak in parallel the way the fire speaks — each one its own force, all of them the same drive. The mighty keep the deep planes, the wisps keep the openings, and the veil-line keep the feeling, and the three have learned that a force that is not felt is a force that is not a drive, and the not-feeling is the whole of the peace.
Culture & Lore
The element is the only honest conversation the plane has ever trusted, and the lore of the line is the element. An elemental that feels its Veil a day past the opening is an elemental that has kept the plane, and the keeping is the whole of its reputation. The white-hot core is the mark the line keeps — the fine, deliberate brightness that shows when the Veil thins — and an Element-Sense whose core runs true is a being the plane will trust with the veil-line. The The Forgotten are the only ones who have ever kept a drive the plane had already forgotten, and the keeping is the whole of the legend.
Home
It lives on The Elemental Planes, the eight raw planes where the element is the only law and the plane the only clock. The being keeps the veil-line, and the veil-line is the whole of its home, because the home is the element and the element is the home. The Dragons of The Elemental Roost do not come down the thinning, and the not-coming is the whole of the kinship. The plane gives the line its drive, its shape, its one honest conversation, and its one true ear, and the line keeps all four the way it keeps the word — until the Veil is done.
Relations
The Dragons of The Elemental Roost are the shaped kin of the elemental, and the kinship is the whole of the distance — the dragon keeps the element the way the elemental keeps the drive, and a dragon that has kept a word the plane forgot is the one the roost calls the oldest. Uaellaen of the camp is the only mortal the plane has learned to bargain with, and the bargaining is the whole of the bond — the Court of Ash is bound by blood-pact, the only known method that works on avatars, and the binding is the whole of the word.
In the Story
The six who arrived through the The Threshold never came down to the plane, but the plane has been feeling since the oaths were sworn below, and the veil-line's elementals have been sensing a day earlier than they should. This season a wisp came up the thin Veil with a word that was not in the element — a word that is not in the drive, and the not-listing is the whole of the warning, because the plane keeps its word, and the word has started to move. The Element-Sense feels the thinning the element is keeping, and the thinning is the whole of the story's edge.