Ability Unearthed

Paiko's Latent Element: Mineral Earth 

His species does not have ability to harness fire or flight. Sure, he can swim decently, but nearly every experience he's had with water was a bad one. Not the water itself, but what preceded that water. Usually falling. From a cliff. Into an ocean. Bearing the evidence of struggle and defeat, because two enormous felid predators decided ganging up on a small drakon was fun to do every single day in that twisted temporal loop.

It seems only natural that his latent element would manifest as something he had relied on for protection and defense during those trying times.

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He learned to stay out of open areas and stick near tightly-clustered rock formations, providing chances to slip in between cracks, where they couldn't reach him.

He learned to scale walls and spires, how to leap confidently from ledge to ledge, knowing the distances like the back of his hand.

He learned how to navigate in the pitch-black caves, using not just his extraordinary sense of hearing, but also the subtle quivering of the very stone walls themselves.

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Considering the island cliff he had lived on sustained no plant life at all, he felt no such connection to natural, organic earth. In fact, the first time he had ever stepped foot in a field of grass was his arrival in the Paperverse. He could sense the root networks and the expanse of flora around him, but he could do nothing to grow them or manipulate them. What he did feel were all the abiotic components in the soil - all the minerals and sediments and rocks beneath the carpet of flowers.

So that's how it worked. He was attuned to mineral earth.

Though he'd never been able to make glowy crystals before. Must be a side effect of dimensional travel.