by Ivan Kal
He glanced back to the blade as she walked closer. She saw his face take on a sorrowful look, and his eyes looked forward, toward something she couldn’t see.
“If you could’ve seen it… The soaring towers of the Heavenly Orders, the heart of the spirit arts. If you could’ve seen the masters who resided there, who created such wonders that I cannot even begin to describe them. Blessed armaments that could level mountains. If you could see my Thundering Spear, my armor of Heavenly Glory… This thing”—he tapped the blade—“is nothing compared to that.”
“Your Engraving… Is it anything like the enchanting the mages do?” Ashara asked.
“In a way. Our Engravings are a bit different than the mages’ wards. But I guess that at its core, yes, they are.”
“And you plan on Engraving this?”
“Yes, I do not know many formations, but I am experimenting.”
“Did you ask Kyarra for help? I am sure that she could help you enchant it with wards. She might even have some books in her library that could help you,” Ashara said.
Vin turned thoughtful, then nodded. “I haven’t thought of asking… You are right, combining your magic and my arts… I might be able to create something close in power to my lost armament.”
Ashara gave him a quick smile. She wanted to open her mouth and speak, but she was afraid. Vin had to have noticed something because he turned and spoke.
“You did not come here to talk of my experiments,” he said.
“No.” Ashara sighed. She didn’t know how to ask; she was not good at these kind of things. “I…I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”
“You know that I would do anything in my power to help you.”
Ashara took a deep breath. “I was hoping that perhaps you could help me become stronger? I know that I was a burden when you and Kyarra were fighting. I can’t do anything, I am weak, but I don’t want to be…and I was wondering if perhaps you could teach me to become like you?” she asked in a rush.
Vin was taken aback, he blinked slowly but didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry,” Ashara said quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked—”
“No,” Vin interrupted her. “I was just thinking… I understand why you are asking this. But you should know that I have never considered you a burden. You are my friend, closer to me than a sister would be.”
Ashara nodded, but she knew that it was a rejection—of course it was.
“As for what you are asking,” Vin continued. “Your people do not have cores, not like mine do at birth. I do remember our historical texts mentioning that, long ago, we didn’t have them either. I believe that we were perhaps like you, that we had ki—or rather anima, as you call it—flowing through our bodies freely. We then learned how to contain it, how to craft cores for ourselves. The great Ryu-Ana, one of the first spirit artists on our world, she discovered the way for us to cultivate the power inside of our cores, and crafted the original idea of the Path. But I do not know how it is that they did so.”
Ashara bowed her head, disappointed. She should’ve known better.
Vin continued speaking. “I can see your ki—anima—but it is a tiny morsel compared to what the mages possess.”
“I have anima?” Ashara asked, a glimmer of hope raising its head. Perhaps she could become a mage—she would become anything, if she could just stop feeling so useless. But Vin shook his head sadly.
“Not in the way you think… All living things have anima inside of them. To become a mage, you need to have a certain amount of it. You have as much as any other ordinary person has, insufficient for casting magic.”
Ashara’s hope died. She truly was unworthy.
“Perhaps…” Vin said thoughtfully. “If I can figure out how to force your anima into a core… But even then, Ashara, you must understand that being a spirit artist is a long road. You would not gain power tomorrow. I know that you have watched me climb the steps, gaining power quickly, but that is deceptive. I had already done so before, and in a world far poorer than this one. My power growth here is not a true indication of what a spirit artist just starting out would experience. Taking even the first step is a massive ordeal, enough so that there are people on my world who had never managed to do it.”
Ashara nodded her head, and kept it bowed, looking at the ground. She felt Vin move and then put a finger under her chin and lift her head to look up at him.
“Ashara, don’t be disappointed. I promise you that I will look into this. I will try to find a way to craft for you a core and teach you my arts. It will just take time… There is so much to be done. The Arashan are on this world and they are building a gate. But whenever I have a moment, you have my word that I will try.”
Ashara gave him a small smile. “Thank you,” she told him.
But inside, she couldn’t help but feel a dark hole open up, ready to swallow her whole.
CHAPTER SIX
VIN
Five Years Ago
Kai Zhao Vin opened his eyes and looked around him. Even in darkness, he could see almost as if it was day. The world around him looked gray to his eyes, but he could also see the aura that permeated everything on this world. The power to be able to see in the dark without using a Bending technique to do so had been granted to him once he had achieved the fourth step of the Path a few months ago after his confrontation with Ming-Li. Even now, he was still impressed with how fast his growth had been since he arrived on this world filled with aura. Advancement on his world, while he still had his old body, had been slower. Now, ever since he had reached the fourth step, his eyes adjusted to dark by themselves, with no need for any technique.
It was not the only change that he had noticed.
He was noticing strange things; he would look at a person and immediately his mind would lock on onto any weaknesses that they demonstrated. He would notice when someone was favoring one leg over the other; he would know if they were sick; at a glance, he would be able to tell if they posed any kind of a threat to him. He knew that he was experiencing this because of what he had done to reach the third step. When he had taken in ki from a spirit beast’s core in order to quickly gain strength, he had taken a shortcut, and he had paid the price by having his soul bonded with that of the beast. He was still not sure what had happened. During his battle with Ming-Li he had lost control to the spirit beast, and had spoken to it in what it had called his soul plane. In the end, Vin had managed to convince it to return control to him, but the conversation they had only served to give him more questions.
From everything he had been taught as a spirit artist, taking in ki from spirit cores which were not purified was a taboo. It was considered one of the worst things that a spirit artist could do, in part because of the chance that they would take in a piece of the dead spirit beast’s soul—something which would inevitably led to the spirit artist losing themselves and becoming nothing but a mindless beast. Vin himself had hunted down dozens of failed spirit artists that had done the same thing.
Yet he had survived, and he had no idea why. Nothing that he had learned before told him of this even being a possibility. Kyarra had told him of what he had done during his fight with Ming-Li while the beast had been in charge, of how black ki had flowed from his body to cover him whole; of how he had been faster and stronger, and Vin needed to understand that power. Even though he was now wearing a weaker body, one whose spirit was not as developed as that of his old body, he still had a vast knowledge of spirit arts. Any edge he could find he would use in order to stop the Arashan who had taken his world.
Which was why he was in a dark dungeon-like room, deep inside the mountain. It was the place where Vin and a hunter by the name of Sabin had tracked the spirit beast to, and where they had killed it. Vin hoped that perhaps the place of its death would stir something enough for Vin to reach it and speak with it again as he had done before. And so he sat down on the floor, cycling the strange ki inside his core.
He was already at the peak o
f the fourth step, ready to attempt reaching the fifth. He was confident that he could accomplish it, which was another thing he had come here to attempt. The fifth step differed from the fourth simply in the amount of power a spirit user had. Here on this world, Vin had as much aura to draw in and convert as he wanted, and he had forged his body for the task of handling vast amounts of power.
The fourth step hadn’t been as hard for him to reach here as it had been the first time. It was one of the simpler steps once one achieved the third, as it required him only to reinforce his ki conduits and expand them in order for them to handle a greater amount of ki. His ki affinity had proven very useful in the process; his core had adopted the affinity of the ki that he had taken from the spirit beast, and even now Vin was struggling to grasp what it represented. Ordinarily, spirit artists would adopt affinities of the elements found in nature, at times even combinations of them. But the affinities of spirit beasts were different—they could be elemental in nature, but they were also always something more abstract: a desire, an emotion, an aspect that was difficult to grasp, but it was undeniable that they were always powerful. He just needed to figure out what it was.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, allowing his mind to still and focus on the slow cycling of his ki inside of his core. The aura around him swirled as he began drawing a greater amount in and started the preparations for taking the next step. He paid close attention to the new aura coming inside of his body, and the effects when it encountered the ki inside of his core. It was a strange sight; as soon as his ki touched the newly gathered aura, it almost attacked it and converted it to his affinity. Hunger was the only way that Vin could explain the feeling. It was as if no matter how much aura he gathered and fed to his core, it still wanted more.
Vin had been spending much of his time studying the magic of this world. And the more Vin thought about it, the more he realized that the fragment-bearers resembled something like the spirit artists. Their fragment, bonded to their souls, served as a reservoir of power, just like a core, which allowed a mage to draw and use that power instead of utilizing the aura around them. It made him question many things. But ultimately, even though the anima inside of fragments was surprisingly pure, it was not as dense or powerful as a spirit artist’s ki.
Spirit artists usually relied on their core’s ability to generate ki of the affinity their core had adopted, or at least they had on Orb. Vin’s old body had been like that; he had utilized a cultivation technique that increased his generation rate to incredible amounts. But his new body wasn’t like that. As a Sage of the spirit arts, Vin was privy to the knowledge of many techniques, both cultivation and martial. He hadn’t mastered any of them, of course—a spirit artist didn’t master many techniques, but rather focused on a few and raised their mastery of those to the greatest level. Vin could use many techniques, but his execution of them would never match someone who had focused solely on those techniques. Unlike the mages, who were versatile, the spirit artists were focused. Vin’s last body had been focused on Surging and Sculpting techniques, mostly because of the reality of his world and the low amount of aura available. Using Surging, he would enhance his body, and with Sculpting he would rule the domain around him. But here, on this world there were so many more opportunities.
A spirit artist had two ways of increasing his supplies: by cultivating his core to increase his ki generation, or by pulling in ambient aura and cultivating it. There were few spirit artists who would use the second way, simply because on Orb there was almost no ambient aura, or at least not enough that they could advance up the steps of the Path. But on this world, it was possible. It was why Vin had decided to craft for himself a new type of a body that required insane amounts of ki to function. He based it on the body of the Three-folded Sage, and enhanced it by the body utilized by the third person ever to reach the seventh step of the path, Jisai Alana. He had created a new type of body that was at its base a sensory type, allowing him to detect changes in the aura around him to an incredibly precise degree as well as absorb an enormous amount of ki. The part he based on Jisai Alana’s Star-glowing Body he wouldn’t be able to utilize until after he reached at least the seventh step of the Path, but it did make his Surging techniques easer to control.
He had done so for several reasons. The base of his spirit arts had always been Surging techniques, and they would continue to be his base, but with greater ki supplies and the abundant aura of this world, he would also be able to utilize the Shaping techniques which he had known but were never viable on Orb, not on the greater steps of the Path. He had decided to focus on making his core adept at cultivating the ambient aura, and converting it into ki as a way of increasing his supply and developing his core instead of focusing solely on his core’s ki generation. He was still capable of generating ki passively, of course, but not to the extent he used to be.
Instead, he would pull in aura and convert it. It was not as efficient as simply generating ki; there were more reasons why other spirit artists rarely utilized such cultivation techniques. To convert ki into his own affinity or any other was relatively easy, as it required only to have it enter his ki channels and an effort of will. But the quality of such ki was poor, which meant that any technique he used with newly converted ki would not be nearly as powerful as those with which he used his own ki to execute would. It also took a while for him to refine newly converted ki to the same levels of his own generated ki. It was an effort, but when he had such abundance of aura everywhere it seemed foolish to waste it. And he could always just find shadow aura and cut down on the converting part.
After a few more moments of studying his core, he turned his attention elsewhere. He thought back on his first and only encounter with the spirit beast inside the plane of his soul. The endless expanse of green grass and a star-filled sky… He tried to remember how he felt then, the feelings of desperation, of anger. Ming-Li had toyed with him, he had lost his balance, and in doing so the spirit beast had taken control. A part of him worried that it could do the same again, but the months since then had passed without any such issues. And if what the beast had told him was true, then the two of them were now stuck together forever.
As he allowed his mind to clear, for all of his worries and desires to fall aside, he felt something. It was a strange feeling, almost like vertigo. He felt himself flip, and then he knew that he had succeeded. Vin opened his eyes and found himself in the same place he had been before. The green grass came up to his knees, and it swayed on a nonexistent wind. The night sky was filled with stars. There was nothing around him in any direction, but he could see the grass as clear as day. He turned around and saw a large boulder, but he found it empty. The last time, the spirit beast had lounged on it, and now it was gone.
“It took you long enough to come speak with me again.”
Vin turned around only to see the spirit beast standing before him. It was barely a few steps away, and its head stood above Vin, looking down on him with two glowing blue eyes. It still looked vaguely like a tiger, or a cat of some sort at least. Its shoulders were wide, its body muscled, and its claws longer than any cat he had ever seen. It had stripes of deep blue and black, and somehow it seemed even larger than it had been in life.
For a moment Vin couldn’t speak, but then quickly he gathered himself and bowed over his fists to the cat.
“Honored one,” Vin greeted it, then straightened back up.
The cat narrowed its eyes and then started walking around him, all the time keeping its sights on him. “Honored one? The last time we met, you had not been so respectful.”
“Apologies, but I was taken aback both by the revelation of your existence and the fact that I had been fighting for my life.”
“Understandable,” the cat said as it jumped up on its boulder in one great leap. “So, now you are finally here for answers?”
“Yes,” Vin said.
“Yet you already know them, because I know them. I told you before: the moment you
took in my ki and my soul entered your body, the two of us were bonded forever. We are no longer two separate beings—we are one and the same. What I know, you know. What you know, I know, as well.”
Vin didn’t respond. The cat had told him something similar before, but he still didn’t understand.
The cat then closed its eyes and released a sigh. “I can see that you refuse to see. Very well, let me teach you again. We are two sides of the same coin, of the same soul. Think of us like two aspects of the same person. You are the conscious part of our soul, and I am the unconscious part.”
“How can that be? If you had become a part of me, then shouldn’t I be changed?” Vin asked.
“Are you not? Already you have noticed that you act differently, that you see things that you hadn’t noticed before.”
“So that is because of you?”
“Yes, but it is not as if I have changed your entire personality. If anything, it is the other way around. What you consumed was just a portion of the soul of who I used to be. Our bond changed me more than it had changed you. I was not the same before as I am now; I was more primal, more of a beast. I am a part of you now, even though I remember all that I used to be.”
“Shouldn’t I have those memories too, then?”
“You are me, so you know all that the spirit beast that had called itself the Hunter knew. It is only that you hold that knowledge in the deepest reaches of your mind. Yet, already you are making use of it in your day-to-day life.”
Vin didn’t speak for a long minute. He had noticed differences in his behavior, but they were minor, and he was still himself enough to recognize the differences. But in the end, this was his new reality—nothing that he knew could change it, and he considered himself lucky that he hadn’t succumbed to the beast. “So, I should call you the Hunter?” Vin asked as he remembered that it had addressed itself as such the last time they spoke.
