Mara finally raised her head to lock eyes with the woman outside my Soulscape.
"When I say they warred against natural law, Holy Vessel, I mean that they sought to change the parts of their nature that made them unable to help you more. I do not know all of the details, and must ask forgiveness, but I do know that they sought to alter the nature of their own Soulscapes, to undo the limitations that made them too weak to save the saints. It was not one single plan, and of all the surviving riders who tried to explain it to me, not a single one made sense. Rather, each one sounded more mad, and more grieved than the last. It was the grief, I think, that made them ignore my counsel to abandon their plans and move on. They were sages before they were knights, they said. It was their duty to find a way, they said. One more damnation could not matter now, they said. So they withdrew to the world of records and stories, Vessel-Saint, and hid themselves. It would seem they were successful, and now a young man has been born who can contest the horror-men, and shield from them the last of my age's saints. So forgive them, I beg you," my grandmother said as she bowed her head. "Their grief and good intentions made them lawless, and their lawlessness bore fruit. Please do not curse their memories with your disfavor."
Vessa stared at the dragon-woman's spirit for a moment, before finally closing her eyes and sighing in frustration.
"I have forgotten," the gray woman said as she covered her face with her hands. "Just how fanatical the people under our care had become. We were worried about it. We thought it would lead to catastrophe if we did not find a way to curb it somehow. That was why we kept trying to catch ideas like that early on, so we could quash them."
"Vessa," I said quietly. "Your people did all that, instead of listening to them. And a catastrophe happened anyway."
Her expression caught on my words, and she began blinking furiously.
"That… Jasper…" She stopped blinking finally, and turned her gaze back to inside my soul. "I hereby offer no condemnation to the sages of Earth. Not for their efforts on behalf of the Soulships. Let them rest in peace, although you should know, Elder Mara, that I have no power over the souls of the dead."
"With respect, Holy Vessel," Mara replied, her head lowered once again, "your words will forever have power that you yourself may never even learn. Such things are true for the least of us. They will hold true for one of the saviors of the night sky."
"Okay," Vessa said with a shake of her head, clearly done with this conversation. "Let's go back to discussing Jasper's soul, since there's nothing I can do about what his ancestors have done. We need to figure out how to stabilize your substages again, which means you'll need to pick areas to focus on. That's going to be a long explanation for everything but your essence, but we'll get through it. Before that though, we need to talk about what the jotun gave you. I appreciate you trying to respect my grief, but I know my giants wouldn't have left you empty-handed. Not after you promised that you were going to take care of me in their stead. And yes, Jas," she continued firmly, seeing my confusion, "I know you would have told them that. It's too late to hide the fact that you're committed to protecting me." She kept watching me. "They shared some of their physical strength, which should have been obvious, and… oh," she said, blinking again. "They… they had something for me, hidden inside your soul… may I take it out?" She held out her hand, and suddenly looked almost a decade younger, like a young child asking for candy.
"Of course," I answered, confused. I had not realized that Vessa's jotun could have done something like that, especially as fragmented ghosts.
Vessa concentrated, and I felt something light and airy float out of me, like a passenger who had hitched a ride off of a train might do when they had reached their destination. Vessa caught the invisible object, and cuddled it close to her chest with both hands.
"The best thing they could have given me," she whispered, before shaking her head. "Later. I'll have time later. Thank you, Jasper," the ship-woman said as she turned her focus back to me. "This will help me remember them, help me not forget them again. But back to you. I know they have given you strength, but I do not understand why it looks like… well, this." She gestured uselessly. "Elder Mara, do you have any thoughts?"
"Holy saint," Mara began, "the young rider has inherited their immortal strength."
"Immortal?" she asked, perplexed and tilting her head. "But they weren't immortals. They weren't even anywhere near strong enough to leave part-souls. I wouldn't have let them stay on my crew if they were."
"You wouldn't have?" I asked, confused. "Why?"
"Because staying would be bad for them," she said, as if such a thing was obvious. "They have their own Advancement to worry about. I wasn't about to get in the way of their ascending to the realm beyond just so that they could stick around and do menial jobs around a star ship. It would have shamed my entire race."
"So not a single member of your crew was in the final stages of Advancement, in any Source energy," I clarified, trying not to sound frustrated.
"No," Vessa said, shaking her head. "That's not our people's way. Besides, I wasn't even strong enough to form a part-soul—not that it works that way exactly, for a Soulship—so why would I have a crew member that could? They wouldn't need my protection."
"Are you telling me," I began, inhaling carefully, "that your purpose of acquiring crew was so that you could protect them, and not the other way around?"
"Of course," Vessa said bluntly. "My people were unchallenged for ages. We couldn't even comprehend a foe that could hurt us… until the very end," she finished, covering her forehead as she finally realized the point of my questions. "And yes. Our refusal to let others help has probably… probably ended us as a species," she sighed. "Forgive me. It's been a heavy day."
"Agreed," I said gently, then tried to help by moving the conversation along. "Grandmother, can you explain what this immortal strength is, and how I acquired it, as well as whether or not I should be as excited for it as the name merits?"
Both of the women grinned at me and let out a light chuckle.
"You can be as excited as you want, grandson, as long as you don't run outside and immediately try to lift the entire ship. There are only small flecks of the power, but it will grow as you Advance, much like the bonds you formed with my daughter's children. In the later stages, you may well be one of the most powerful beings under the night sky. Assuming you are wise and survive until then," she finished, as a warning. "Now, where were we? Yes. Quite simply, your already powerful physique will become much stronger than it should be, and each stage of Advancement will increase the benefit—especially for your essence Source. As to how your benefactors were able to grant such a benefit," Grandmother continued, sounding more cautious, as if she was suddenly worried about lacking knowledge in this subject, "you must know that even through the time of the vessel-saints, it was largely believed that the only way to ascend to the next realm was to Advance past the known stages and transform your body and spirit into something new. But there were older stories, ones whose claims could never be proven, that spoke of a different way." My grandmother lowered her spectral head and closed her eyes, as if in memory. "It is said that the righteous dead always found immortality, and that certain deeds were their own path to eternal enlightenment. Since those claims could never be proven, and Advancement could, they diminished in favor of a more tested method. But creating eternal strength is a difficult undertaking for those even at the ends of their journey to the next world. It should have been impossible for the holy vessel's crew members, unless they had found an eternal truth at the time of their deaths—one that contradicted common knowledge."
I shrugged. Even after hearing my grandmother's words, I found it hard to believe that anyone cared when the righteous died. But as it were, we had more important things to be worried about. I had become tougher and stronger, would become even more so in the future, and that was the most relevant information.
As Nova continued to Draw by herself, Vessa
and Mara walked me through the stabilization process. They started with essence, since that was currently the easiest to stabilize. They guided the cry of my mosaic through its heart, mind, and bones, securing those vital areas first, to safeguard my body's growth. This would ensure that no other parts of my body would overdevelop and harm my health. For some reason, it also helped stabilize my mood. I didn't realize it, but I had developed a subconscious irritation after my confrontation with the mad shadows. I wanted to twitch when people touched me, and strike something if it surprised me. Until now, I hadn't even noticed I was suppressing those urges.
At my new instructors' recommendation, I moved to stabilize my qi next. Qi was the balancing Source, the one that encouraged moderation, rhythm, and the correcting of extremes. For this reason, many of the best doctors and healers were qi practitioners.
To stabilize my first three substages, I would have to combine the aspects of a number of droplets and mix them together, to determine the properties of my qi pool's current depth. Then, I would have to determine just how many depths composed each 'layer' of the pool. In other words, there could be several depths in one layer, just as the various ocean depths were divided into four main layers on Earth. Since my qi pool was nowhere near the size of an ocean—even counting the murky dimensions of my spirit—I decided it would only need three basic layers: surface, middle, and bottom.
I designated the first three depths of my pool as its 'surface.' Vessa and Mara encouraged me to select a concept that would both be practical and healthy for me, by mixing the chosen elements from my last qi stage. We all discussed the issue at length, but in the end, we decided to pick a concept that would help soothe my stress levels, help me protect myself, and, possibly most importantly, conceal the bulk of my power and my uniqueness as a tri-practitioner and someone with a slowly growing host of other special gifts.
I chose the concept of 'calm' for my surface. My power and I would, at first glance, appear nothing special. I would also be better able to react in a controlled fashion to violent external stimuli. Vessa and Mara decided this suited my personal nature quite well, so they approved of my choice.
For the first depth of my surface, I mixed together the qi droplets of water, air, earth, metal, and frost, granting my pool's surface a mixture of hardness and flexibility. This ensured that it would be possible for my pool to ripple under stress, but it would be difficult to pierce its surface and learn more about my powers. No one would learn too much from me, at least not the first few glances. For the second depth in this layer, I mixed together water, frost, earth, metal, and wood, making the middle part of my pool's surface denser, so that a strike or divination that actually did pierce the top depth of my surface would meet more resistance the deeper it went. For the final depth, if an intruder made it that far, they would get my 'angry' face—the appearance I made when I was ready to commit to a fight. I chose the drops of fire, metal, lightning, frost, and earth.
At that point, I had to pick two specific elements that would condense all three depths into a single layer, one of which that I had not added yet. They recommended water and qi, or possibly earth, all for very good reasons, but I shook my head in respectful disagreement.
"To maintain the calm of my surface, the best two elements would be qi itself, and war."
"War?" Vessa asked in surprise skepticism. "Why?"
But Grandmother Mara only watched me carefully.
"Because, Teacher Vessa," I began, "I need to maintain the appearance of calm in many environments, and I won't actually be calm in some of those. I will need to appear brave, and in control, and unaffected, when I am in fact terrified, or uncertain, or angry—or even all three of those things at once. I will need to deceive others, and what element has more deceit than war?"
All war is deception, my mother said in my mind. She had drilled that into me over and over—especially when we were watching news conferences.
"But what about when you're not actually at war?" Vessa countered. "What about when you're generally relaxed, and feeling good about your circumstances?"
"Hence making qi itself the other binding element," I said with a shrug. "And war doesn't necessarily mean I'm fighting all the time. It just means I acknowledge that I can have enemies. Earth used to have plenty of countries with armies, and some of the least violent eras were when everyone had powerful armies and also rulers wise enough to know that a clash between said armies would result in nothing but devastation for both kingdoms."
I reflected further on that fact. Earth reached its greatest devastation when a country had a large army, without having a wise ruler, and when the rest of the more stable governments did not have an army powerful enough to oppose that ruler.
Shortly after that, the Glorious State came into power and began to establish the Global Republic. They both disarmed the other nations' armies as well as regulating the peoples' access to knowledge, so that they could not raise up new rulers with the wisdom to question the Glorious State.
"His reasoning is sound, Holy Vessel," Mara said gently, and respectfully. "He was a child that grew up in a world of constant danger and even more constant lies. This path is both practical for his needs, and will be his best route to long-term health. With your permission, Holy One, I give my support to his decision."
"And it is his decision to make, in the end," Vessa said with another sigh. "I swore that I would respect such decisions when I became your master. Very well, Jasper," she continued with a nod. "I don't understand your reasoning, but I can see that your choice is helping you right now, and others see that as well. And we just talked about how the best teachers were flexible when it produced results. So I'm going to respect your decision, and do what I can to help you. But I'm going to share my concern for you if it looks like your choice starts damaging you in the future."
"Thank you, Vessa," I said gratefully. "I'm fortunate that you have the mindset that you do, and are still willing to help me."
"You're welcome," she said as she smiled at me. "Now let's get back to work. We have another Source after this one."
Mana proved to be the hardest Source to stabilize my gains in. This was mostly due to the nature of the first three stages of mana Advancement. In essence, the first three stages were considered to be the 'childhood' stages, where one's mosaic beast (or mosaic person, in my case) moved from birth to survival. The first three stages of qi Advancement were called the gathering stages, because one gathered enough qi to condense into a pool, and then enough to send through tributaries in the body. But the first three stages of mana were called the alloy stages, because the stages of tin and copper eventually combined to create the third stage of bronze. The substages I formed in copper would need sciences that meshed well with the sciences I chose in tin. The better a job I did with this, the better transition I would have into bronze.
The problem was deciding what sciences to pick that meshed well with concepts such as mathematics, that I had not already picked. Physics, math, chemistry, and engineering all complemented each other almost perfectly—which was why I had already picked such sciences in the tin stage.
"I should have caught this," Vessa grumbled, closing her eyes and massaging her temples. "But I was too busy being happy over you finally picking what you actually wanted, and it being something that worked," she complained to me.
"In fairness, Holy Vessel," Grandmother Mara interjected. "His choices work quite well under your guidance. The fact that his sciences already complement each other can be a boon, as now he can simply decide to focus them all further, and probably develop a much stronger alloy of Source energy in the very end."
"That's true," Vessa said, brightening. "Jasper, think about your favorite aspects of each of your mana sciences, and try to see how many would be applicable with each other."
I nodded, and immediately picked my mathematics wisp. As I did so, the three floating copper wisps detached from the tin wisps they were clinging to, and drifted over curiously.
&n
bsp; I thought about my feelings of math, and realized they had not changed one bit.
I hated studying math.
But I loved using it.
Learning math for the sake of math itself, be it arithmetic, calculus, or probability, was incredibly boring to me. But learning it to better help me do something, especially now that I could use it to help me hurl lightning and fireballs, was perhaps the greatest of my new joys. I focused on the concept of applied mathematics, the part of math that specifically tried to be useful, and made it the science of one of my new copper wisps.
That wisp immediately darted toward my math tin wisp and tightened around it, spiraling with it and connecting at the very ends.
For physics, the problem was actually the opposite. There were many different aspects of it that I enjoyed studying for the sake of studying. Some of them were already joined to other wisps. I went with a specialization developed shortly before the rise of the Glorious State: foundational physics. Foundational physics was a broad specialization, but it focused on the differences between classical physics and the 'modern' physics, the second of which was basically quantum mechanics and other fields discovered after the twenty-first century. Here the two wisps joined together more slowly, but more firmly in the end.
"That's almost cheating," Vessa pointed out, "since you went with a broad science and chose a broad specialization to link with it. Fortunately, like your grandmother said, you've already chosen a number of specializations for physics as a wisp for your tin stage, so it worked out fine. Keep going, but be careful."
I accepted her warning and moved on to the third wisp. Again, chemistry was a broad science whose specializations already coincided with parts of biology, kinesiology, thermodynamics, even physics and engineering. If I picked the wrong specialization now, the knowledge might be redundant later. So I went with analytical chemistry, the branch of chemistry that just looked at the composition of materials, and the tools needed to examine them.
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