Servant of the Conduit

If a spell or ability with one or more targets states that you "may pay" some amount of energy , and each permanent that it targets has become an illegal target, the spell or ability won't resolve. You can't pay any energy even if you want to.

Energy counters are a kind of counter that a player may have. They're not associated with any specific permanents.

If an effect says you get one or more energy , you get that many energy counters. To pay one or more energy , you lose that many energy counters. You can't pay more energy counters than you have. Any effects that interact with counters a player gets, has, or loses can interact with energy counters.