by A F Kay
Gong!
You have increased your Knowledge!
Level: 69
The intelligent know true power is held by knowledge. The wise know knowledge can be dangerous. Greatness is found between them.
The twenty-one-point increase in Knowledge brought Ruwen’s Cleverness up to seventy-five percent and his Persuasion to eighteen percent. Raising the Knowledge Rating was difficult, but considering the things he’d just learned from Blapy, twenty-one seemed low. He closed the notification and sat across from the Addas.
Both the Addas set their books down, and Padda leaned forward. “We find ourselves in a unique situation. Normally, at this point we would know much more about you, having spent at least a decade with you, and you would have completed the first binding ritual around Step thirty to ensure you were worthy to continue.”
“Instead,” Madda said. “We know little about you, and you are ready for the Master test in both the Bamboo and Viper Steps. Worse, you were never judged worthy with the first binding.”
Ruwen bowed from his chair. “My apologies, Grandmasters. I did not intend to take a shortcut or circumvent the Clan’s rules. I merely took advantage of a unique opportunity to make up for lost time.”
“You explained that in the Spirit Realm,” Madda said. “And we believed you, which is why you’re still alive. But if you don’t bind your Step knowledge to your soul soon, you will lose it.”
Ruwen sat up. He had worked without sleep for over four and half years to learn those Steps. The thought of losing all that filled him with anxiety. “What must I do?”
Padda pulled the small table next to his chair into the area between the three of them. He set a small pouch on the table and then locked gazes with Ruwen. “First, three warnings. One, because you didn’t perform the first Binding, this will be the first opportunity the Founders have to judge you, and they may deem you unworthy.”
“What consequence does that have?” Ruwen asked.
“Best case, your Step knowledge is burned from your mind,” Madda said. “Worst case, you die.”
Ruwen swallowed hard and nodded.
“Second,” Padda said. “You must work hard to remain there until your task is complete.”
“What happens if I fail?” Ruwen asked.
“You return here and there is no going back,” Padda said.
That made it clear to Ruwen if he started this, he needed to finish. Which caused some problems since he had an army weeks away from his new city. “And the consequences of failure?”
“If you return unsuccessful, your Step knowledge will be purged from your mind and body.”
“I’m sensing a pattern here,” Ruwen said.
“Third,” Padda said. “Not everyone is trustworthy.”
“You must rely on your instincts,” Madda said. “Because the stakes are so high, it brings out the worst in people.”
“How long does this normally take?” Ruwen asked.
“The length of a thought,” Padda said.
Padda sounded like he meant that as a sincere answer, and Ruwen glimpsed a tiny portion of Sift’s frustration with his parents.
“If Sift were here,” Madda said. “He could give you the answer you seek. He finished his final binding shortly before you initially arrived, and it took him a week.”
Ruwen didn’t have a week. He had four days here in Blapy before his parents woke up in New Eiru. “Can I do this in a couple of months? I have a lot going on.”
“Of course,” Padda said.
Ruwen sighed in relief.
“By then,” Madda said. “You will probably have regressed far enough to take the first Binding.”
Ruwen leaned forward. “I’ll lose two-thirds of my knowledge in just two months?”
“Soul constraints are difficult to judge,” Padda said. “It might be more.”
Losing so much progress made Ruwen’s stomach turn. Worse, he wouldn’t have his Spirit Realm trick to relearn it, so it would take years to get back to this spot. The Steps had become part of his identity. Not only did they hone his body and mind, they gave him a confidence he’d never had before. His Step training helped him overcome the mental barriers of fear and doubt, and losing that knowledge would affect him in ways far greater than just losing fights.
“Now is a great time,” Ruwen said.
Padda smiled and gently overturned the small pouch. A black rock the size of Ruwen’s thumb slid out, and a quest appeared.
Ting!
You have received the quest…
Watch your Step
As you near mastery of the Bamboo Viper Steps the Clan must confirm your worth and prepare for your advanced training. The Founders will monitor your progress, judge your soul, and decide your fate. Use your knowledge of the Steps to guide your path.
Restriction: Adept of the Bamboo Steps
Restriction: Adept of the Viper Steps
Reward: Clan approval for Master assessment
Reward: Mentorship for your Grandmaster path (if chosen) upon becoming a Master.
Reward: 25,000 experience
Accept or Decline
Ruwen chose Accept. His future in the Bamboo Viper Clan depended on succeeding in this quest, and it made him worry a little. He had invested so much time in his training that the thought of losing it all made him sick.
With a thought, Ruwen used Analyze on the rock.
Target: Touchstone of Crossing
Type: Item (Soul)
Properties: Dimensional entanglement, +1 Bludgeoning, Soul Drain
Uses: Soul stones combine projection and translocation to move the holder to the stone’s source, powered via the holder’s soul.
“It is a soul stone,” Padda said.
“Do I need to bind it?” Ruwen asked.
Madda shook her head. “It is a bridge. Your soul will power the crossing.”
Ruwen had quite a few soul related experiences. He had bound special items like his Void Band, entered into soul bindings with Rami and Fractal, and taken soul oaths like not using any of the Forbidden Steps he’d discovered while learning the Bamboo Viper forms. But he’d never heard of his soul powering anything.
“Do you mean Spirit?” Ruwen asked.
“No,” Madda said. “Spirit is something you gather from outside and store inside your Core.”
“The soul and Spirit are linked however,” Padda said. “The soul is a rich source of Spirit for those who Harvest.”
Padda’s tone didn’t contain any accusations, but painful memories from outside Fractal threatened to swamp Ruwen’s mind. During the last night of camping with Big D, he had Harvested all the creatures inside Fractal, killing them. Now he knew what had given him so much Spirit. It made his stomach turn.
“I’m confused,” Ruwen said. “I’ve never heard of a soul powering anything.”
“Have you seen any of the Step Tournaments?” Madda asked. “Witnessed the incredible feats of power and speed displayed?”
Ruwen nodded. “But I just assumed they used Spirit to do those things.”
“All of you bound to false gods believe that,” Madda said. “Because you have lost touch with your soul. It is buried under the heavy hand of your false gods, who perch like leeches on it after you Ascend.”
Padda put a hand on his chest. “To be fair, it is difficult for an outsider to tell the difference between actions powered with Spirit or the soul. You have a good understanding of how Spirit works, and know it originates from outside yourself. Soul energy is the opposite. It is generated internally and is finite. Only meditation and time can recharge it after you’ve spent it.”
“You met many different Clans in the Spirit Realm,” Madda said. “Each Clan has perfected ways to use their soul’s energy.”
“And while the vast majority are Cultivators,” Padda said and then pointed at Ruwen, “or Harvesters, they are not the only ones who can use the soul’s power. It is difficult, but even the Ascended can learn.”
Ruwen reme
mbered near the end of his first stay in Blapy. He and Sift had been practicing Ruwen’s first Steps, when Ky had appeared out of thin air. After Ky and Sift had exchanged a few blows, Ky had stopped the fight and held out her fist. Sift had covered it with his palm, which meant Ky had a higher rank than Sift. And she had Ascended, just like Ruwen.
“Did Mistress Kysandra succeed?” Ruwen asked.
“Yes,” Madda said. “One of the few Ascended Masters that didn’t need to become an Apostate to find her soul and start the path of a Grandmaster.”
“But Kysandra has always been exceptional at finding hidden things,” Padda said.
“So, I might reach Master, but never be able to advance to Grandmaster,” Ruwen said.
Padda nodded. “If this happens, you would not be alone. There are many reasons the path of Grandmaster is unattainable. Not finding your soul is just one.”
“What does the stone do again, exactly?” Ruwen asked.
“It transports a part of you to Mount Sorrow,” Madda said. “There you will compete with everyone else who wishes to advance in our Clan. Your time is limited, but you can extend it by eating fruit found on the mountain. When your time expires, you return here. If you haven’t reached the summit, you can not advance.”
“Reaching the top of Mount Sorrow is challenging but proves your worth to the Clan,” Padda said. “Doing so grants you the opportunity to test for Master.”
Madda leaned forward. “Our Founders roam Mount Sorrow, watching. They look for those that embody their style. When you reach the top, if your destiny is to become a Grandmaster in our Clan, a Founder will make themselves known to you.” Madda looked at her husband. “Do we need to start making that plural?”
Padda smiled. “You just can not resist.”
“What, can’t a mother be proud?”
“Proud of what?” Ruwen asked.
Madda faced Ruwen. “I am a Viper Grandmaster and that old man is a Bamboo Grandmaster. For the millennia our Clan has existed, Adepts climbing Mount Sorrow have only found an empty summit or one Founder. Recently, an Adept found two waiting. It is an immense honor.”
Madda grinned, her joy spilling out of her, and even Padda gave a small smile.
“Sift,” Ruwen said.
Madda nodded. “We prayed he would just make it to the top. That is an achievement all its own. Never did we think he would find both the Bamboo and Viper Founders there. It is unprecedented.”
“He never mentioned it,” Ruwen said.
“I know,” Madda said. “He doesn’t care. All he wanted to talk about was how good the red sorrow fruit tasted. All that boy thinks about is food.”
Ruwen smiled. “Yeah, he only cared about the food benefits after finally becoming Blapy’s Favorite. He—”
“Blapy traveled to your world?” Madda asked in a quiet voice.
Ruwen’s body automatically relaxed, preparing for violence. Madda’s tone had been even, but years of training had triggered his sense of danger. He only managed a nod.
Madda faced her husband. “I thought she would never go back.”
Padda nodded at Madda and then looked at Ruwen. “Interesting.”
Ruwen had little desire to start this trial, but he really didn’t want to start discussing Blapy, Sift, and everything he’d been through. “What do I need to do?”
“Touch the stone,” Padda said.
Without hesitating, Ruwen grabbed the touchstone.
Chapter 28
The library disappeared, and Ruwen felt ten seconds of freezing darkness before his vision returned. His shirt and pants were now cotton, both colored a dirty white, and his left wrist no longer had his Void Band. Just like in the Spirit Realm, his interface had disappeared, and even more concerning, he couldn’t feel his Core.
Ruwen stood in front of a fountain. A ten-foot statue of a bare-chested woman stood proudly in the center. The black statue had lost its head and water bubbled out of the stump, filling a small pool at its feet. The headless statue held an immense bow, drawn tight, the moment of release perfectly captured. A quiver of stone arrows hung from her back.
The fountain lay in the center of a large building, which only had three walls and a partial ceiling remaining. Pews ringed the statue, and Ruwen wondered if this might be an abandoned temple.
Many of the surrounding buildings looked ready to collapse, the marble filthy from years of dust. A few hundred feet away, the ruined city ended, and a forest of bamboo began. In the distance, a mountain erupted from the forest floor. Covered in bamboo, only the top of the mountain looked bare.
Rami? Ruwen asked.
Silence.
For a moment, Ruwen flashed back two months. He had felt alone and a little scared like this sitting at his parent’s table, waiting to start his walk to the temple and his Ascendancy.
Laughter made Ruwen turn, and he found two dark-skinned women fifty feet away and striding toward him. They wore the same dirty white cotton clothes Ruwen did, and a light breeze tugged at their shirts. He had advanced enough with his Step training to recognize others’ abilities almost instantly. And these women made his skin prickle in fear.
The Scarecrow Aspect kept him in the second meditative state all the time, but here the aspect didn’t work. Ruwen sank into a level two meditative state on his own, and the fear became a distant warning. As much progress as he’d made with the Steps, he recognized how far he needed to go. Compared to Madda and Padda, Sift and Ruwen moved like…Ruwen imagined how Lylan would phrase it, “pregnant apahas.”
Madda and Padda’s movements reminded Ruwen of a soft breeze or a slow mountain brook. The women that moved toward him felt as if an entire ocean had stilled. A dead calm of epic proportion.
As they approached, Ruwen bowed deeply and held it, waiting for them to speak. Regardless of who these women were, the time they’d invested in their training deserved his full respect.
“Rise, traveler, I am Mist,” Mist said. “This is my sister, Thorn. What are you called?”
Ruwen stood and kept his body relaxed. He knew he had little chance of defending against an attack, but that didn’t mean he needed to make it easy. “My name is Ruwen Starfield.”
Now that the women were closer, Ruwen could see they were almost twins. The only difference between them, was their eyes. Mist’s pupils were brown like a tree trunk, and Thorn’s were a light brown, almost golden, and they reminded Ruwen of Sift’s eyes.
Locking gazes with Thorn, Ruwen felt dizzy, and he glanced away. Did she have some sort of hypnotizing gaze? The air pressure against his temple increased as a strike approached from the direction of Mist and Ruwen reacted without thinking, as he’d been trained to do.
Ruwen leaned away from the strike and sank into the First Step, dodging the blow and giving himself a solid base to ward off any other attacks. He felt a large disturbance in the air from his blind side. Likely one of Mist’s legs arriving to break his stance. He gave a silent thanks to Sift for the extra blindfolded practice.
Leaning forward, Ruwen placed his hands on the ground, relieving the pressure on his legs. Mist’s foot felt like solid terium as it struck his ankle, but without any weight, the sweep quickly broke his stance. Ruwen used the sweep’s momentum and added a hard twist of his hips, rotating his body around and aiming a kick where Mist’s head should be.
The kick met empty air and Ruwen funneled the energy into flipping himself upright. He kept his body relaxed and faced his attackers. Both sisters stood where they’d started, as if they hadn’t moved at all. Had he imagined the attacks? But his ankle throbbed from the brief contact with Mist’s sweep, so it must be real.
“That is true,” Mist said.
Mist appeared to be speaking to someone behind Ruwen. Was someone behind him? There was no way he’d look. That had to be the oldest trick in the universe.
“He moves like the warped one,” Thorn said to Mist.
Mist nodded. “A slight difference in breathing. This Adept’s focus is better.�
��
Ruwen wondered if the “warped one” they’d mentioned was Sift. The Addas had said he’d just completed his testing—
Thorn slapped Ruwen on the side of the head, just above the ear. “His focus seems to only last while in the Steps.”
Ruwen cursed himself for letting his thoughts wander. Rami would have made him pay for such inattention, too. But—
Mist slapped the exact spot on the other side of Ruwen’s head. “Yes, fascinating. Such focus in the Steps and then his mind becomes chaos, even in the second meditation.”
Ruwen focused on not thinking about anything. He vowed to himself he wouldn’t get slapped in the head again. It was embarrassing.
Thorn looked behind Ruwen, nodded and laughed.
Ruwen’s curiosity ravaged his mind, but he ignored it. It was likely a trick, and thinking about it would only get him slapped.
Mist stepped close to Ruwen, and Ruwen raised his arms a fraction to prepare to grapple.
Mist noticed the movement and studied him for a moment. “Your form is excellent,” Mist said. “Who is your Sisen?”
“Sift, son of Padda and Madda,” Ruwen said and bowed his head as Mist remained too close to him for an actual bow. Mist stepped back two steps, but Ruwen remained alert for an attack.
“Interesting,” Thorn said with a long look at her sister. She turned back to Ruwen. “Your Sisen appeared of similar age.”
Ruwen bowed fully this time. “That is complicated, but I can explain.”
“First, let us see what the Steps have taught you,” Mist said.
That was a weird thing to say. “Do you mean you want a demonstration of the Steps?” Ruwen asked.
“If that is what you have learned,” Thorn said.
Why did they keep phrasing it like that?
The two sisters stared at Ruwen and he didn’t know what to do. What had the Steps taught him? He had learned many things: discipline, focus, body control, confidence, beauty, a deeper appreciation for Rami. Unsure, he decided to just show them.
