by TJ Reynolds
Rather than sulk or grow frustrated, Kai took the lesson in stride. He had been careful to listen to every word spoken regarding the various stances, their strengths and benefits.
Position one was Tiger Hides its Claws, a basic and adaptable fighting stance that could be identified because of the down-turned palms.
Tiger Slashing Snake had a more offensive nature, and in fact, according to Rhona, the attack could not be blocked.
Kai doubted any attack was foolproof. But Rhona reminded him of the ether augmentation of her most powerful skill.
When he had the idea that fist weapons might be used as well, Rhona shot it down. Her class, he remembered, depended on a set of oaths.
Kai couldn’t imagine giving up so much offensive advantage for any reason. Given the potency of Rhona’s skills, he could concede how some might take that path.
The dalgard on the right leapt forward, swinging at Kai with an exaggerated haymaker.
As Rhona had shown him, Kai ducked under the minion’s limb and struck out with three quick jabs.
No sooner had he finished than the next dalgard threw a sloppy kick at Kai’s leg.
Kai gave ground, taking the blow on his knee.
Then, always attacking in conjunction with her silent companions, Rhona dove into the mix.
Her leg snapped out twice, the second connecting hard against Kai’s upper thigh. The blow shook him, causing him to nearly stumble.
When he tried to recover by switching his leading leg, she moved in past his guard and her hands flashed as she executed a blinding combination.
The monk from Brintosh was Kai’s closest friend second only to Ban. But she’d spent far too long soldiering to pull her punches completely.
Each punch landed with a thunk, the last tweaking a short rib under his left arm.
“Yield! Yield!” he called out, shaking his tingling hand for relief.
“You can’t yield to Hastings, Kai. He’ll kill you with a smile on his face,” Rhona chastised him. Then, moved by compassion maybe, she threw in, “You’re improving though. Keep focused, Kai, you’re a natural fighter.”
Regardless of how she pretended to be angry, it wasn’t lost on Kai that she hadn’t stopped smiling since their impromptu sparring session had begun. She always seems so happy when she has something to punch, he mused, well aware of her casual beauty even through the fog of pain.
“I know. But I can’t fight anyone if you break me first.”
Rhona laughed in a twisted way. Shaking her head, she told him something he did not want to hear. “We’ve only just started, Kai. And I will have you know, the entire purpose of this training is precisely to break you. Now, how about you go and fetch your glaive. Time for phase two.”
The next hour passed, each second showing Kai how much more pain he could handle.
Rhona slipped around and between his attacks with ease, leaving him with more and more bruises.
More dalgards were used.
The minions fell easily, lacking the coordination and skill that Rhona had acquired over years of training. Again and again, she threw the minions at Kai, always augmenting their fronts with a perfectly timed maneuver.
Building to a crescendo, Rhona demanded no less than four of the dalgard soldiers, each bearing its own spear, face off with him at once.
Relieved to finally be facing only the dalgard, Kai took a deep breath and readied himself.
The dalgards moved as one.
Even in the short time he’d known her, Rhona had pushed Kai to expand his concept of combat. No warrior could fight a crowd of foes, not straightforwardly at least.
When he’d first picked up the glaive, Kai figured every fight revolved around finding the perfect moment to skewer your enemy.
Surviving a few fights had taught him a few things. One: groups of enemies didn’t play by any rules. Two: no matter how quickly you attack, defense is the only way you can survive fighting against a group. Three: sometimes you got hurt no matter how hard you tried.
Kai slipped past the first spear tip, slapping the shaft of his glaive against the second aimed for his chest.
The third dalgard swung down in a huge arc, giving Kai plenty of time to slide away from the strike.
The fourth though, a darting lunge, cut across his ribs painfully.
Gripping the spear under his arm, Kai jerked to the side, plucking the spear away.
Kai dropped the spear and kicked it in the middle of its shaft. The wood flexed and sprung up at a dalgard’s face. Kai blocked another blow with his glaive, and given a half-second reprieve, opened the throat on another dalgard.
Several more attacks came for him.
The dragon ducked and rolled, coming up to his feet and spilled the entrails of a second dalgard.
Then a blinding pain burned in his kidney as one of the two remaining dalgard got lucky.
The strike had glanced off of a rib, perhaps the only reason why Ban hadn’t been forced to heal his body. Still, the pain was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
Raging, Kai spun.
The spear point tore free of his flesh, tip dipping as the weapon fell. His dalgard foe only had time to draw in a lungful of air as he flicked his glaive up and out the back of its throat.
Kai screamed as he slammed aside the last attack aimed at him. Then he lunged, his legs spreading wide and he extended his body, glaive acting like the head of a viper.
He drove the weapon in and out of the dalgard’s torso. Plucking it free again, Kai turned on his heel and swung hard.
The minion’s head smacked the stone wetly and rolled a few times before it stilled.
“Not bad!” Rhona said, clapping. “You are improving quickly. Now, if you could manage that without getting stabbed in the back, I’d say we were getting somewhere.”
“Thanks for the high praise,” Kai muttered bitterly.
The monk chuckled but asked a more pressing question. “And your Progression? I know you’ve been working on your own too. How close are you to Emerald ascension?”
Kai sighed before pulling up his EI.
Taking in the good news with the bad, Kai told her. “More than three quarters there. I could break through in an hour of slaughtering Ban’s minions. But…”
Rhona sensed his hesitation.
They were all aware that Kai was in danger. His very core shook under the threat of failing to ascend to Emerald.
Their work, he realized, was far from over. It was time to move on to the more mental aspect of the training.
Blowing his breath into his hands, Kai examined the bubbling pool of water with every scrap of skepticism he could muster. The pool wasn’t deep. In fact, it only came up to his waist.
What worried him wasn’t the depth or the speed with which it flowed though.
It was the temperature.
“Come on, Kai. I know you don’t want to. Still, you need to trust me. When Palben pushed me, it worked somehow,” Rhona explained again with more patience than she’d shown all night.
Kai groaned. “I’m sure Palben was the best teacher ever. Tell me, Rhona, was he handsome?”
She shook her head in a silent warning.
“Fine. Sorry, it was a low shot anyhow,” Kai admitted, placing a toe in the icy stream. Wincing, he tried to change the subject a little. “What did you have to do? Icy river at midnight?”
“No. A freak hail storm had blown off from the mountains. We were camping twenty miles from the Kaltanese border when I asked Palben to push me.”
Rhona’s eyes went vacant, a smile gracing her lips as she recited the memory. “So, in nothing but my small clothes, I meditated in the storm for hours. I’d trained the entire day as well, by the way. Don’t think you got off easy.”
“And it helped?” Kai asked in a quiet voice.
“Aye. At daybreak, I gained a small thread of insight. It wasn’t the same day that I mastered Crystal Mind. Later that week though, I got my breakthrough.”
Kai breathe
d deeply, a shiver passing up and down his miserable body.
Then he stalked stubbornly into the stream and sat down.
The frigid water numbed his limbs in moments.
Having found a slow-moving pool, Kai didn’t have to struggle to remain in position. He only had to struggle to stay put.
Rhona showed another side of her master persona.
She didn’t snicker when he gasped, the water stealing his breath away in a moment. She didn’t jeer at his requests to end the training when they inevitably came. Rhona only reminded Kai what was at stake.
“You cannot survive this, Kai. Not without ether. Remember, your core is a raging inferno,” she instructed kindly. “Pull the heat you need from your core. I promise you, it is possible.”
Kai shuddered under the stream’s merciless embrace.
Eyes closed, he envisioned the five pillars of Crystal Mind, performing the task of assembling the structure around his core again and again.
Picturing his core, Kai begged the whirling motes of ether to fill his limbs with warmth and strength. Though the pain of the ice water refused to leave him be, the shivering did eventually stop.
Kai stared up at the sky and gaped at the multitude of stars there. No torchlight ruined his view.
Every inch of sky he could see at the bottom of the chasm burst with starlight.
Moved by a fit of inspiration, Kai closed his eyes yet again.
Kai floated in a river of numbness and distant pain. He didn’t pay it any mind. He focused instead on forging the five walls of Crystal Mind. The structure was assembled in mere moments, the gleaming prism around his core more resplendent than ever.
Imagining the sky above, Kai relaxed his focus slightly, trying to settle in and observe his core with less judgement or pressure.
Then slowly, pinpricks of light emerged in the shifting expanse around his core.
He didn’t have to be told what this revelation was.
He knew it instinctively.
The pattern of his Mandala was emerging.
40
Studying Stripes
Rhona
Watching Kai commit himself to each of her excruciating tasks was fun at first. The pain of combat and training were so prevalent in her life as a soldier that she could not feel guilt for causing him discomfort in this way.
When the dragon entered the pool of water, however, she had to repress her urge to stop him. Palben never stopped me, she remembered.
The intense training seemed to have paid off as well. Rhona doubted that full insight could be gained in such little time, but when Kai emerged from the pool, his face had been alight with the majesty of revelation.
“I saw the pattern, Rhona! Or at least part of it,” he’d said, shivering unconsciously.
She’d swaddled him in his cloak and helped him limp to the hearth in Ban’s core room.
Not ten minutes later, and the two of them were slipping into the warm embrace of sleep.
Morning came all too soon.
With it, the realization that their time was running out.
Rhona knew they both had more work to do. Her own Progression was now well behind his , so she insisted on entering Ban’s little gauntlet first.
Perhaps the Earth Core thought she was still sensitive from her recent losses. She was, emotionally at least. But that didn’t mean she lacked a spine. “Come on, Ban! Don’t hold back. Give me five at a time, okay?”
Five dalgard fighters formed around her, two with spears and three with swords, and the next battle ensued.
Grinning savagely, Rhona slipped under one attack and deflected another with the ethereal shield from Imogen’s bracelet. She rolled to the side of one dalgard, finding a position to take it down. The creature spun, swinging its sword at her clumsily. She dodged, but only partially. The sting of the blade’s tip zipping through the flesh of her arm only served to clear her mind.
Then her body flooded with unleashed AE, and she tapped the creature with two knuckles in the center of its sternum.
Weaving a tendril of ether into the strike, Rhona stopped the beast’s heart.
The following counter attacks were hard to avoid. Given that she essentially couldn’t use her Spirit Surge skill, not if she wanted to gain any Progression at least, Rhona did what she could the old-fashioned way.
Slipping past the hacking slash of a swordsman, Rhona side stepped the second thrust of a spear. She could only move at normal speeds, however, so the spear cut a groove down her inner thigh.
She winced at the pain, but shot out two devastating kicks afterwards, both crushing the chest of the dalgard she targeted.
The last rushed her, holding its spear dumbly as it did so. Rhona avoided the tip and rolled down the shaft, slamming her elbow in the dalgard’s throat.
“Not enough, Ban! Try six this time, and please, do what you can to make them smarter!” she demanded. When the next bout began, she knew how much Ban had been holding his minions back, and it irked her.
Still, he delivered what she asked for.
Covered in still-healing cuts and bruises, Rhona finished her first round of training around midday. Her Progression was nearly full. The only reason she’d stopped was to eat and refresh herself.
Gaining the Progression by slaughtering idiot minions was one thing.
Surviving the transcendence of Emerald ascension was quite another.
Kai joined her meal, the young dragon lost in his own thoughts. When it became apparent he would endure the meal in silence, she butted in. “Tell me, dragon boy, how close are you to Emerald?”
“Just a few kills away,” he replied, his gaze stiff and terrified. “Last night, in that strange vision, I swear I could see the pattern. As soon as I emerged from the water though, it’s like it went away. Most of it at least. I’m just…”
“Afraid you’ll die or ruin your core?”
He laughed bitterly. “Yes, exactly.”
Rhona sighed, knowing his concerns were at least as terrifying as her own. A little compassion was called for. “I understand, Kai. I know the pattern of my Mandala well and yet I am still afraid of Emerald. I’ve heard so many… interesting stories. Anyway, the only advice I have to you, Kai, is to relax. You cannot ascend by fighting through the transformation. It can only occur with surrender.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Kai asked. His face scrunched up in a mix of anger and curiosity. “I just lie down and let it all happen?”
“Essentially, yes. Your core knows what to do. Ether, as mindless as it is, knows how to flow within your body. All that needs to occur,” Rhona explained, “is for you to guide its way. If you tried to guide a horse up the hill, would you scream at it? Pull its mane or whip it?”
When Kai shook his head, she finished. “The same goes with your core. Don’t force it to do anything. Try to let it find its own pattern. That’s what I intend to do at least.”
Kai chewed his food in silence for a time, his eyes searching the grain of the wooden table for secret answers. When he finished, he asked her one more question. “I’m not alone in this. How long until you ascend, Rhona?”
She shrugged, sighing through her nose as she chewed. “Two more skirmishes will do it. In fact,” Rhona announced as she stood up and wiped her mouth. “I’m doing so now. Good luck, Kai. Trust yourself and all those who are counting on you.”
Rhona hugged the young man and left him at the table alone.
Then she reached out with her mind. Ban, I’m ready. Two more groups of six please.
She adopted her usual fighting stance and bounced on her toes while Ban summoned his minions. And with the acid and bile of fear in her belly, Rhona waded into her foes.
How long has it been since I reached Golden? Rhona wondered, massaging her sternum earnestly. I almost forgot how damn uncomfortable this feeling is. Like I’ve eaten three meals in a row and was forced to drink down a pitcher of ale afterward.
Of course, the surging ether in her core ma
de her more uncomfortable than an indulgent night out. In fact, this time it seemed her body was straining in a dozen different places to contain the power of her Progression.
Threads of pain seeped into her hips and around her back. Her hands and feet tingled slightly, and her head pounded with a mild headache.
Without knowing what she would find there, Rhona found a quiet corner in Ban’s core room and fell to the tedious process of ascending.
Ban, she asked in a humble voice. Can you put up walls around me? I… I would like some privacy.
Kai was outside, working on his final few skirmishes. He too would be undergoing ascension. They’d discussed the possibility of him avoiding it for the time being. Yet how much worse would it be if he found his core full and in need of transformation in the middle of the battle to come?
Moreover, Kai had seen some portion of his pattern. That meant a lot, and so Rhona encouraged him to seek Emerald despite the risks.
Finally, all knew they would be facing many powerful foes, Hastings aside. Kai needed to be as strong as possible. Rhona wanted to be there for him, felt proud he’d come so far so quickly, and in part due to her instruction.
But Rhona had her own core to worry about. For the time being, all she wanted was to feel like she had some space to herself, no matter how illusory that sensation was.
No problem at all, Rhona. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Oh, Ban added as if forgetting something. Good luck.
Then two large walls sprouted up from the ground, slamming into the ceiling. Her corner of the core room was now its own separate chamber. Only ten feet by ten feet, the room was perfect. She blinked, studying the newly fashioned walls.
She could see by the glow of ambient ether, and though she sometimes found fire soothing to look upon, Rhona felt she had no need to light a candle.
Instead, she closed her eyes and beheld the raging storm of her core.
The dense and orderly ring of ether now buzzed chaotically. Excess ether splashed over the edges of her core, filling her body with countless motes of energy. This was what caused the pain, the discomfort. The body was meant to rely on the power generated within one’s core.