After meeting the social expectation of dinner with classmates, Harding begged off any further adventures to study. Returning to his room he set out several study candles and then extracted his secret objects. He felt excitement around the intrigue of his forbidden study, but still the possibilities of advanced learning motivated him most. Harding deeply needed more.
He knew other students would be having interactions with other wandering monks, in this temple, in other Okkor temples, and in all the other temples to all the other gods. He reasoned his experience was probably not that much different than theirs in what material was taught. Each monk had their own personality though and that would color the adventures each offered. Rent was a very colorful character, so it made sense to Harding that his method would be outside of the norm.
Instead of the trope perverted monk, I got a subverted monk.
Harding cracked open the book of Szaktaa and thumbed through the pages. There was no title, table of contents or even page numbers. Harding figured that made the copy a bit harder to identify. Whoever policed such things as heresy would certainly be able to identify it, but others might not. An unconvincing method of security. He could not rely on the minimalism of the copy to protect the book, his continued vigilance would be needed.
Without instructions otherwise, Harding started reading the first chapter. Some of it was similar to what the temple taught, for instance that the spirit was the middle body between the lower physical body and higher mental body. Other teachings were the same idea, but with different explanations, such as that spirit carries the will of the gods and allows man to manifest them into the world in their glory.
Where Szaktaa diverged from the standard taught concepts was in the purpose and use of the spirit body. The purpose, according to the shaman, was to allow the divine a greater control over the other bodies. In essence that the spirit, which allowed "Divine and Glorious acts”, was actually a tool of control. Szakti, the shaman, claimed that it was a chain to bind the soul to divine command, and through the soul it controlled the bundled flesh. That the flesh was the anchor which held the soul in the physical realm.
A different take for sure, but this was the understanding of a nonhuman cannibalistic shaman. Harding assumed there was a difference in worldview that colored his take on the purpose of things.
Szakti professed that magic, as done by mortal will, was the commandeering of the divine mechanisms for baser purposes. Essentially, godseeds were meant only for chosen mortals actively doing the gods' bidding and the common use was a rebellion against divine order. And as a whole, Szakti zealously encouraged such rebellious attitudes but not godseeds.
No way they make a game where the players aren't supposed to use the magic they provide.
The most shocking part though was his assertion that there were hidden gates within the body, closed off from view and use by mortals. That these gates were of the divine world and coming into understanding of them was to ascend to the divine. He argued that all things hidden not only could be found with the right tools and practice, but sought to be known. As if knowledge had its own will and purpose.
The shaman, as Harding understood him, claimed that Spiritualism was the path of ascension. But it was unclear if that meant to physically travel to the gods, to become mentally closer to being tools of the gods, or to actually become a gods-like immortal.
As much as he reveals, more is lost in translation and terminology.
Szakti was specifically adamant about what the mage had translated as ‘soul gate’, claiming that the gate itself was the chain that linked the soul to the spirit. The only freedom, he asserted, from this wheel of endless rebirth and servitude was its obliteration.
I can definitely see why the church doesn't like this book…
While the chapter was long on concept and theory, there was no practice directly suggested. Simply, it was meant to be a theoretical and theological exploration of primitive Taaka views and not a textbook. Which left Harding with the question of how to satisfy Rent's requirements. The writing implied a great need to be aware of the gate structure within the body. To master the first chapter, Harding decided to add gate structure awareness to his meditative practice. His ultimate goal was being aware of the hidden gates, if they existed, but the greater neural connection from the practice could only help his future magical endeavors.
While Rent had complained about the author being a Phirisian mage, Harding couldn't detect any overt presence of religion. Harding knew little of the gods, despite living in a temple. The religious terminology was ambiguous and pedantic to him, but Harding's general impression was that Phiris was a civilization goddess. In the context of a discussion with such primitive and barbarous people as the Taaka, the interviewer would certainly be diametrically opposed to the shaman in beliefs. And yet while perhaps it colored the author's translation choices, the answers felt consistent and surprisingly raw.
I might need to know more about the gods if they're all tied to magic. Also if most academics are followers of particular gods, it could influence their findings.
Harding retrieved his journal and started a notes page. Separately, he began a book topic list for research categories he needed to know more about. Such as the gods, the Church, and any inquisition forces.
From the visit to the Cathedral he knew a little. It was the Church's assertion that Addion was the leader of the gods, but that all of the gods were equal. They suggested that any perceived issue between the gods did not exist and instead was merely the result of rivalry between their followers.
The gods being all one happy team seems like an obvious lie. I bet there used to be multiple religions.
Finished with the book for now, Harding turned his attention to the seedcrypt and more closely inspected it. His earlier observations had missed some finer details. First, there were two tiny gold inlays on opposing sides of the sphere, creating an axis perpendicular to the scrollwork. They were polished flat and about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter.
He had also missed that the sphere was actually two hemispheres. That made some sense since a container would need to open. He was unable to unscrew the parts or otherwise separate them which again made sense as it was a lockbox for high level loot.
Not just loot, with this shape this is obviously a godseed loot box. Yet when the rangers came back with seeds, I didn't see anything like these.
Tentatively, Harding reached out and touched it with his spirit. The exterior gave a cold and smooth impression which had no give to his probing. In fact he suspected it had been intentionally armored against spirit intrusion. The idea that something could be proof against the gods' own tool of spirit gave him pause.
That means something is effectively an insulator to the divine. But the divine works with it, they craft in their own anathema? Unless it isn't.
It seemed counterintuitive at first, until he noticed he could push spirit into the golden poles. Focusing on one, he pushed spirit in a short distance and hit an armored plate. Within were twelve directions he could go down little channels, arranged similarly to a clock face. Entering any gate allowed him into the next wheel of twelve. He continued on through two more wheels when the device cut him off.
Harding sat there a moment trying to figure out what happened. He had entered the wrong code. It was highly unlikely to guess all four correctly at the first try, which meant it let you enter the wrong paths without judgment until the end.
Each wheel is a tumbler on a lock, where I turn the energy instead of the wheel. How would you solve this without the duodecimal code?
Any incorrect path would trigger a failure at the end, flooding it with spirit instead of picking a channel produced the same failure. Harding tried the other side of the seedcrypt and found it to be the same mechanism. Without the code the device would take a lot of time and extreme finesse with spirit, even if it was only one set of four. If each side had different codes, he didn't see how this was doable.
Perhaps the code is delivered with it? But then why make such a device? The finesse required to enter a code is tough as it is. Which has to be exactly what Rent wants, there's no way he expects me to actually open this.
Unsure of how to proceed, Harding set the two back behind his book shelf and restacked the books to hide them. Then he sat and meditated on the structure of his gates. He tried to stop all the extraneous thoughts while inspecting the insides of his spirit body. It yielded no great revelation other than the frustration of his randomly firing brain.
It was still early evening when he stopped and, anticipating a busy evening tomorrow with Randal, he set out once again to the town. He didn’t have much in the way of coin and hoped to make money while adventuring, then invest it while living on the cheap with Brother Rent. However, that didn’t appear to be happening any time soon.
Harding went in search of the Merchant’s Trade Association which was deep into the Old Market district. Again, the Watch guards were helpful. They did take the opportunity of his questioning to point out that the Watch were not members of the Guard corps of the Merchant’s Trade Association. The city Guards were also not members. The distinction between them being that the Watch patrolled the streets and district gates while the Guard was the outer gates and general city defense.
The Old Market district was dominated by a large open plaza. Harding could easily imagine it being the major trading space of the past city, but now it has been converted into a segmented plaza with flat grassy sections, paved walkways and an ornate central fountain. The buildings along the centrally located Old Market Way all seemed new, with most buildings facing the plaza being commercial. The rest of the buildings were weathered, which stuck out to Harding for some reason every time he really explored this district.
Did the devs rebuild this section before launch and intentionally left it this way?
Harding wandered until he found what the last set of Watch officers had told him to look for, a broadstreet called Caravaneer Lane. Despite being a lane, it was as wide as the way and lined with an excessive amount of stables. At the end of the lane he found the Merchant’s Trade Hall, an old building that reminded him of classical Greek architecture.
He walked the stairs and passed the pillars into a massive open front hall. Along one side was a long desk of clerks who each had a line of waiting customers. On the other side was a long desk of clerks who had various rough looking armsmen standing around as they ran up and down checking a sea of postings on a gargantuan cork board behind them. At the back of the room was a small table being used as a desk, an obvious afterthought of management. On the wooden desk sat a small sign, “General Information''.
Harding walked up to the desk and the very large, aging woman who sat behind it. “I’m here to see Master Sancliff,” Harding informed her with a smile.
“About,” she asked with obvious indifference.
“Recruitment,” ventured Harding.
“Fill out a recruitment form and you will be contacted within three weeks.”
“I was told to talk to him directly.”
“Fill out a recruitment form and you will be contacted within three weeks.”
“I was told to report to him by Brother Rent.”
“Fill out a recruitment form and you will be contacted within three weeks.”
She peeled off a form from a pile at the edge of the desk and handed it to Harding.
Harding read the top and protested, “This says Form Request Form…”
“Uh huh.”
“Three weeks?”
“Uh huh.”
Harding looked around the great hall. There were doors behind each of the side desks and a single door behind and to the right of the information desk. There were no other doors in the room except the main entryway. Harding took the piece of paper, walked around the desk and went through the door.
“You can’t go in there,” called the General Information Specialist, but she made no effort to physically stop him.
The hallway was short, a simple door on one side and a small set of cubbies for changes of clothes on the other. At the end of the hallway was another door. Harding strode forward and grabbed the far door. As he opened it, he found himself outside again. He was standing in a walled courtyard, the ground consisting of a packed red clay that Harding hadn’t seen around town. Across the courtyard was a barn-like structure. Harding kept walking and entered the barn.
There is no way I am going to get bullied by bureaucratic buffoonery in this world too.
A small, unpretentious looking man in his mid-fifties looked up from a workbench where he continued oiling some leather belt straps. Behind him was a stable of sorts, but instead of livestock it was filled with rows of all manner of practice dummies, targets and other equipment. The place smelled of seed oils and straw. “New recruit,” he asked with a hungry smile.
“Yeah, I was told to report to Master Sancliff,” said Harding, slightly bending the truth.
“Ha,” he scoffed. “Not by anyone in the front office. Who sent you?”
“Brother Rent of the Order of Okkor.”
“Ah, you’re the one he was saddled with then?”
Saddled with? Brother Rent had said he chose Harding...
Instead, Harding responded, “Yes, Sir.”
“Good. As far as I am concerned you’ve passed the first test,” he pronounced. “No one who is going to wait around for some paperwork is going to do one damned useful thing when everything turns to shit.”
Harding just nodded. He had no experience or context to read this man. Sancliff leaned back in his chair, wiping his hands clean on a dirty rag. He asked, “You know what a Guard is, son?”
“I thought it was a person who watched over something, but I’m guessing I’m wrong,” responded Harding.
“No, you are right,” said Master Sancliff.
Harding blinked in surprise. He was so accustomed to being told he was wrong in this world.
“What most people get wrong is they think it means to protect,” Sancliff declared adamantly. “Often the client gets that wrong too. But it all starts with watching. Fail to notice and you’ll fail to protect.”
Harding nodded. The man didn’t seem like someone you should interrupt. Rent was crazy and thrived on banter, but laid back. This man was intense. He even sat intensely.
Master Sancliff picked up a clean cloth and began waxing a different piece while he spoke. “The Guard corps is a subsection of the Merchant’s Trade Association. They Merchant’s sell power. Various parties, usually other merchants, contract with the association to hire members to serve as guards. You can easily imagine this as bodyguards or caravan guards. And those are the bulk of the contracts. However, you’ll find things like guarding a rich person’s outing, being extra muscle for a bounty hunter, or even a marine aboard a privateer vessel as possibilities. And that’s when you’re lucky enough to have a client who actually knows what they need.”
“So, basically you have to be able to handle any situation,” asked Harding.
“That’s the short of it,” Sancliff commented, wiping off the excess clear wax. He was giving Harding his time, but not over doing his planned tasks. The man's focus was clear and clearly a message.
“Sounds like what I’m looking for. Are there requirements,” Harding asked. This was the path Rent set though, so Harding wasn’t likely to turn it down regardless of the answer.
“You get what you put in, that’s not on me. You pay, you train,” Sancliff laid out firmly.
“Do I have to join the association?”
“Only if you want jobs.”
“And, ah, does that affect my monk training?”
“Not unless you let it.”
Harding continued to nod as he processed it. Minimal entanglement was exactly what he was looking for in training and Rent wouldn’t have sent him here if the guy didn’t know what he was doing. Without other questions, Harding finally asked, “Price?”
“For Rent? Crown a week, pay and you get the week.”
Harding sighed, “Unfortunately, I don’t have income to support that.” A crown was quite a bit of money to Harding, though he supposed if he was doing Guard jobs he might be able to sustain that.
Master Bradon smiled, sensing a deal. “You come down here and seal godseeds for clients, we’ll call it even.”
“I don’t know how to seal godseeds yet,” admitted Harding.
Sancliff shook his head slightly and counseled, “Best learn to do that quick then if you want to live outside the temple.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that impression.”
“I’ll tell you what, you can start for a crown and then earn it back with a couple days of manual labor. Once you learn the godseed work, then we’ll pick a day and have you in for a half a day doing the work each week. No more fees or labor after that. I’m trying to convince the association we would benefit from selling services but so far the Choosing Council has resisted the idea.”
Harding could afford a few weeks, but he needed to learn sealing fast. “When can I start?”
“Show up anytime with a crown and we’ll begin. I’m open from sunrise to sunset.”
“Thanks. See you then,” said Harding. “Oh, and is there an easier way to get back here?”
“Take the side gate in the courtyard, follow the alley.”
Harding did exactly that on the way out. He needed to continue his education in Spiritualism, gather money, and learn to fight while maintaining appearances at the temple. Besides his needs, he wanted to look for more books and attend the fights with Randal. He promised himself that eventually he'd get to do some adventuring.
Everything always seemed just out of reach.
-Joshua-
The morning was a rarified thing. Everything was flowing well and he was making headway in the backlog of errors. Everyone was leaving him alone and he was actually able to dig into the deeper issues instead of just solving other people’s emergencies. By the time his 10:30 with his boss came around he was truly feeling in the zone.
Joshua ran into his boss on the way into the room and genuinely smiled. The meeting was booked as one of those career planning things where they mentor your mobility. There wasn’t a lot of room for Joshua to move in the business, his desk was fairly unique within the corporation so these meetings tended to be more about planning training opportunities. But he had ideas how to improve the processes and was feeling confident about his success.
Through the open door he saw a room full of management and knew it wasn't good.
They told him he was the worst performer on his team. Yet he knew well he was the only one on his team besides his manager. They told him his numbers were too low. But he had just turned them in the month before, his productivity above expected volumes. They told him they were restructuring and dividing his tasks into multiple desks as it was too much for one person. But they clearly didn't want him as one of the desks.
Everyone had a different story and none of it made sense. Their claims were jumbled and contradictory, all of it an obvious obfuscation. What was clear though was after almost five years, he was marched out of the building without even a box for his things.
Joshua went home.
He didn't know what to do and couldn't make sense of what had happened. He'd have to get a new job. He'd have to start over. He knew that, but today he just couldn't get out of that confusion loop.
There was always tomorrow.
He slid into his recliner and listened to the ISR power up. The blinds were closed and the lights off, leaving streaks of light leaking in through unintended gaps. Status indicators flicked while the processors audibly ground through their heavy loads. The inconsistent atmosphere matched his mind.
He just faded away.
-Loader-
The midday sun greeted him to his loader's serene scene. Shielding his eyes, he looked up towards the sun. He couldn't look at its blazing intensity hanging in the clear sky. He just kept trying to look without burning up, an unreasoned compulsion. His eyes leaked tears from the searing light, so potent that he could feel it baking off the wetness around his eyes baking off.
He just needed to know the light.
That lone bird sang to him as always, alone yet unrelenting in its search for others of its own kind. He thought maybe he should search it out, but he wondered if he did would it just fly away and never return? That seemed to be the result so often in life. He decided the risk wasn't worth it and walked to the tree.
The staff remained; secure.
So would he.
-Harding-
The next week went by in a blur to Harding. He only logged off for food and function, taking to even sleeping logged in. It sounded weird and he had some concerns about it, but sleeping in his bed ended up with anxiety nightmares punctuated by insomnia. The in-game dreams were weird but he woke up rested.
There are sleep aid ISRs, so it should be fine? I just hope Life isn't scrambling my brain with some bad implementation. TT doesn’t sell them.
He got to see Alexci fight five against five and win on Monday night. By the end though, Alexci was so injured she was barely standing. Alexci’s notoriety and violence made her a target in the arena, but that in and of itself was a weapon she wielded. Friday saw her lose in the last fight, but it was a near thing.
Temple life remained quiet. Brother Roberts focused on teaching extensions of spirit sensing. The original lesson on spirit sensing was pushing the spirit body through open space. The name hadn’t made sense to Harding then, but was now clear with the realization that the intent wasn’t to sense spirit but to sense with spirit.
The class placed voidseeds around the Solar garden and then searched them out while blindfolded. This was somewhat reminiscent of his experience with fish passing through his spirit body. Harding had to keep reminding himself that even rocks had a small amount of spirit, so with active sensing even the terrain could be roughly determined. It wasn't sight, but neither was it blindness.
By the end of the week, Brother Roberts had also taught them aura sensing. It was just a modified version of spirit sensing, focusing on the coloration of divine influence within a foreign spirit instead of only awareness of the spirit itself. Practically, this allowed them to differentiate between godseed colors. To Harding's dismay, the class reported their sensing as seeing the colors in their mind whereas Harding still only felt them. This turned out to be a small advantage though as he could feel them both as color temperature and as a vibrational frequency.
It was seemingly for that reason he could differentiate seeds by types and not just colors. A feat that alluded the rest of the class. Whatever advantage that was though crumbled when different seed colors were brought into close proximity. Next to each other their signature became just disharmonic noise to Harding. Also he couldn't figure out, nor could Brother Roberts suggest why, some seeds were louder than others. With experimentation, they ruled out both color and type as variables.
Just another mystery that wouldn’t advance him.
Master Sancliff alternated his Guard training time between strength training, body-active meditation, and movement fundamentals. No named forms, fancy strikes or anything like that. Just how to move and maintain balance. Harding had suspected this was how it would be to start but was still a little disappointed. Then there were the days when he spent his time doing hard manual labor for Sancliff. It was far from enjoyable, but it wasn’t really anything different than grinding coin by non-combat means.
Throughout the entire process, Sancliff would come and ask questions about minor details from occurrences in the yard. One time it was if a messenger who had been there an hour past had clean boots. Another was the number of students in the class he had drilled that morning while Harding polished buckles. Quick enough, Harding learned that he needed to watch everything and yet he couldn't remember everything. It didn't take long to figure out that the questions were of things that were out of the ordinary.
He spent a Wednesday night bar hopping with Gregor, a tour of the districts Gregor had devised. From seedy bars to upscale establishments, they toured the city. It wasn't lost on him how their relationship had changed. They were doing the things they would have done together if they weren't playing a game. Within Life, they were putting aside the friendship of shared goals and started instead to cultivate a friendship built without the attachments of need.
They already knew each other and got along well, but now they talked about life and experiences instead of just earning experience points and theorycraft. Gregor had settled on opening a shop and was hard at work investigating leads in advancements in technology. He was sure machining and firearms were the future, that Life would follow human history if for no other reason than it was familiar to the players. Harding had doubts about that, but trusted Gregor to find his way through it.
His own plans seemed lackluster in comparison.
They made plans for that Sunday, the Grinder was doing an experimental event around teams of ten with added terrain. Whether the format worked or not, they figured it would be fun. Harding was curious how they'd include structures since they wouldn't regenerate between fights.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Harding didn't socialize much with the temple group as a whole other than class and meals. Besides evenings at the Grinder with Randal when Alexci fought, Alina was the only other person he spent time with.
On the days when he could, Harding would seek her out before mediation. She had no interest in the Grinder or anything with a crowd, but quiet joint study in the Solar garden seemed to make her smile. He didn't try to instruct, but she would occasionally ask a question about what she observed him doing.
Her trauma from her death simultaneously made her more reserved in the group but more willing to engage with him in private. She had caught up with the class in Spiritualism, but the majority of the time she could be found reading theological history in her favorite corner of the library. She found it a grand drama, both extraordinary and existential.
She'd stay an hour or so with him in the garden and then beg off. Harding needed nothing from her and didn't begrudge her her needs. While Harding had caught up to the class in the coursework, it was becoming clear that he was beyond everyone else now in depth. They learned what they were taught well enough, but Harding was developing a broader skill set. And out of all his classmates, only Alina seemed to see it.
The rest acted like he was one of them.
In fact, the most exciting of all his efforts though was the progress he was making in his self-directed learning. Szakti once again delivered heretical, and possibly incorrect, information in a questionably usable format. According to him, godseeds were markers of divine influence used to modify mortals into becoming effective agents of the gods. His take read like godseeds were a trick contract, suckering you into giving up purity in exchange for power. It was unclear what Szakti meant by purity, but it was clear that he thought it a bad exchange.
Beyond the shaman's unrelenting divine paranoia, he also touched on the mechanics. godseeds, he claimed, contain an altered form of spirit energy. The spirit body fed them raw energy to use and maintained some control over the output. As spirit energy entered the seed it was altered by the divine influence to have authority over reality.
Like a godseed was an access key to a game edit tool.
If that was true, it explained why some associated the colors with various gods. Though Harding reasoned that it could be that the religious lore was based on the powers of the godseeds. That the colors of seeds had come first, then the lore created around it. Either way, it reiterated the need to figure out the whole pantheon.
It also claimed each gate existed in a linear fashion and was connected by a single artery of spirit. This seemed unlikely as it would suggest an apparatus separate from the spirit body. However, each gate being a junction point allowing energy to branch into a particular body or ideal seemed plausible. The translation of ideal within the given context was confusing and Harding wondered if it was actually the correct word. To Harding it was more likely to be an energy system, alternate dimension or at least something semi-conceptual like that.
Would there be alternate dimensions in a game?
Szakti's lore was largely unimportant to Harding. The confirmation of the system from outside the influence of the Church of the Seven was the true value. This gave him some certainty that the overlapping portions were fairly accurate. Beyond learning its knowledge the second chapter had no real actionable practice. Therefore Harding decided it was mastered and moved onto the third chapter.
Why would Rent say this guy's ranting was the clearest source? It's full of anti-religious rambling and paranoia. Is it that the approved writings are all gross simplifications or is there something fundamentally incorrect being taught?
To his great relief, the next chapter covered seating godseeds. Szakti didn't call it that, but Harding was already starting to replace the shaman's terms in his head as he read. That night he borrowed Randal's voidseed, then as most of the temple was asleep, Harding walked quietly out into the Sanctuary garden. From his studies, the first step in seating was to key the seed. While he had practiced keying in his cell, standing there past the edge of the temple's light and seeing it dully glow felt like a monumental moment.
Symbolically, it was a great exploration on his own.
The early summer's cool night breeze and even the hint of salt from the harbor was ever more pronounced as his brain actively imprinted his big step in covert learning. He felt extremely aware and alive with the seed anchored to him by a little line of spirit.
"I'm just going to put this seed in you, then take it back out," he whispered to the Spirit tree. He tried to sound reassuring, but who knew how trees felt. He felt like an idiot even trying to soothe a tree. Nonetheless, everything was working.
It felt weird to hold the voidseed keyed, like the faintest buzz in his muscles. Its slight vibration caused Harding to wonder if a godseed would feel different by color when keyed. Whatever the cause, Harding was well aware his physical body was responding to the seed's feedback from his spirit body.
The tree itself was visibly distorted where the seed touched it, as if reality was slightly elastic and being compressed at the edges. Harding pressed with confidence, he’d read that confidence was important. Confidence and intent. As far as he knew, actively trying was intent. So he tried and the surface gave way until his empty palm was pressed hard against the tree. The seed itself sat under the surface of the tree but still anchored to Harding's spirit.
When the seed is keyed it isn't physical, it's only attached to my spirit body! Yet it's still visible, so I'm seeing spirit through it.
Which is how he discovered the next problem. The book just said that the seed was to be put into the gate, but Harding had no idea where the gate was on a tree. Neither had anything he read discussed what kind of tolerances existed for insertion nor the ramifications of doing it improperly.
Harding pulled out and started over, this time in search of a gate. Not wanting the same expulsion as last time, he gently sought a free gate from outside the tree instead of driving inside its spirit. As he discovered gates, he found them filled with seeds. Seven seeds before he found an open gate. He looked up the dark form of the tree and wondered how far up the gates went.
The wealth in this tree though…
With an open gate within physical reach found, he kept his left hand on the tree with his spirit extended through it to the empty gate. He then keyed the voidseed with his right hand and tried to bring the two together. Finding that he needed to go deeper, he pushed his spirit forward through his right palm and the seed moved with it, away from his skin, until it joined the other spirit extension from his left hand at the gate.
With some anxiety, he let go of the spirit pressure on the voidseed. It snapped into place, resting perfectly in the gate. He could feel the voidseed filling with spirit through his left hand presence. With an overabundance of caution, he keyed the voidseed again and pulled it back out.
He had some worries about what would happen if the tree refused to give the voidseed up but it gave no resistance. Holding the seed in his hand, he felt it slowly bleeding spirit into the night air. He had scooped a small amount of energy out of the tree.
Harding repeated the process, practicing until comfortable. He discovered that he could coat the seed in spirit and use it both to sense a gate and key the seed with a single action. He then figured out that he could extend through the seed as a single thread, both probe and carrier. On the much more familiar human anatomy, he reasoned that Brother Roberts' fluid ease of setting would not be difficult to replicate.
It was extremely tempting to pull out one of the godseeds from the tree, however he didn't want to cause issues. He was, after all, standing out in the dark doing actions he learned from a heretical book without permission. Even if they were basic Spiritualist actions, explaining the situation would be difficult. It was other peoples' property, people who housed, fed, and educated him freely. Ethical considerations aside, Harding didn't want to metaphorically shit where he literally ate.
Feeling the energy leaking out of a freshly extracted voidseed raised a new question. Harding did not know if there was a permanent effect on a seed from extraction. Any kind of wear, durability, or other mechanic was completely hidden. Also, did it affect the spirit body? He was extracting spirit with the voidseed, which would refill, which meant there was some interplay.
Probably isn't a great idea to experiment on someone else's tree, but am I effectively increasing the 'spirit pool' by inserting the seed?
Momentarily stuck in his progress, he took a risk. Harding held the voidseed in his hand and keyed it. It glowed warmly, inaudibly humming a song of supposed divinity in his palm. He bent his arm and pressed it to his own chest where he could feel his own Heart gate. He brought the two together and released it. It locked into place without issue, leaving the voidseed in him.
A mental scan of his own physical feelings and spirit body revealed nothing alarmingly abnormal. Beyond the slightest bit of exhaustion, he could sense no change. However, it wasn't immediately clear if the sensation was in the physical or spirit body, nor was it enough to be concerning.
Maybe I increased my spirit pool and this is how it feels to not be full spirit? If so, does a larger pool increase the size or density of my spirit body?
Of all the Spiritualism he had practiced, he couldn't confidently say he had ever actually expended spirit. Everything had been stretching, shaping and feeling. The only exception was maybe keying, but if keying had a cost it was too small to notice.
Harding inverted the insertion procedure and extracted the seed. It went smoothly, just as he had practiced with the tree. Looking at it in his hand, the voidseed seemed as it always was. Clear, clean, and exceptionally simple. Though it was again leaking the faintest amount of energy, it didn't seem to be enough energy to be worried.
Harding practiced it a few more times and decided he was accomplished enough to be able to have confidence in his ability to do it for others. Instead of retracting it the last time though, he left it in. If he exploded it like he had his first time, he’d be dead instantly. His readings had suggested that godseeds regulated themselves as part of the body. They were somehow both constrained and stabilized by being part of a living spirit body. As the minutes ticked by, he knew it was slowly filling inside him. It would continue doing so until meeting an equilibrium with his spirit body.
Harding was relieved to not explode again.
After returning to his cell he sat again in meditation and scanned his awareness up and down his spirit body. It felt slightly depressed, not quite his usual energy state. Figuring this was probably due to the energy expelled during the practice, he ignored it. When he examined his Heart gate, he could feel a slight pressure around it and an emptiness within it. Within the voidseed he could feel a churn, his spirit traveling via its normal circulation and slowly filling in the voidseed’s larger cavity. It felt odd to Harding, so he decided to leave it in for now and see how he adjusted. Harding suspected that after a few hours, or maybe a few days, its presence wouldn't be noticed.
Harding read further into Szaktaa while he let himself acclimate to his modified spirit system. To his excitement, the next chapter covered tuning and sealing seeds. Harding had never heard of tuning a godseed. It turned out that godseeds had a slight pole structure and by aligning the correct ends with the spirit body's flow of energy, a godseed could be ‘tuned’ to the individual user's unique biology. Which immediately made him recall the construction of the seedcrypt.
The effect of tuning seemed to be a very slight improvement of spirit transfer to the godseed, but it must not be very big if people weren't asking for it. He couldn't imagine the majority of the world was missing this knowledge. The topic of tuning only took up about ten percent of the chapter, the rest was devoted to sealing a gate.
And sealing is where the money is.
Sealing wasn't that difficult of a concept. When something with a seed in it died, that seed would naturally remain in the physical world as the spirit body withdrew from it. Which meant unsealed seeds got messy on death and became lootable. Sealing a gate bound the seed to your spirit body, causing it to stay with it instead of being left behind.
So sealing is binding loot by slot. Which means I've got three loot slots and anything past that I'll drop on death… which explains why people pay well for the sealing.
The mental model of sealing started to challenge him when he thought about death. If death was the spirit being severed from flesh then why didn't the seed stay with the spirit naturally? And where did the spirit go, since you didn't just immediately respawn. When you did respawn, where did your new flesh come from?
Could you find your own dead body?
The instructions on how to seal a gate seemed simple enough. Key the seed while circumscribing the gate with a band of spirit charged with the intent to seal it. The direction didn't matter and the speed only mattered in that it had to be slow enough to be a solid band of traced energy.
In theory, simple.
In practice though the exercise eluded him. Keying a gate, let alone the drawing spirit around it, while it was within his own spirit body, using his spirit but separate from his spirit body wasn't at all as easy as it sounded. He could only imagine the resistance in someone else's spirit, though perhaps the separation would at least be easier mentally.
Intent was a challenge as well. Harding lacked real context for it and nothing gauged his success on that account. Did his attempts fail because his trace was inadequate, or was it his intent wrong? Without knowledge of the problem, finding solutions became more difficult.
And then there was the problem of the seed itself. It was as if the attempt caused a great churn of power inside it, the trace causing destructive waves of spirit within the void of the seed. With every attempt it seemed to shake with a stormy reaction and he couldn't figure a way to make it still.
Eventually he gave up, resolving to read more about it. Harding needed that money making skill, but he also needed his sleep. He had promised the full day tomorrow to Master Sancliff.
He logged for biological needs then came back to sleep. Harding's Life dreams had been less vivid than the night hauntings he'd had earlier and much more like regular dreams. That night though his dreams were feverish.
He dreamed of a knocking sound in his chest. He reached down and peeled open his chest, pulling the flesh aside to see. Inside was a voidseed that was filled with water. The water ran into and out of the voidseed from nothingness. Inside the seed swam fish. There was a pair of blue fish that swam in circles, head to tail. Around them swam a ring of three fish, one black, one white and one gray. The knocking sounds he heard was the white fish beating its tail against the edge of the seed every full revolution, as if drumming cadence for the whole performance.
Then he dreamed of filling himself with voidseeds until he was full of them, much more than just three they just rattled around loosely in his spirit body. He just kept stuffing them inside himself. Randomly, he stopped and his spirit body walked out and away from his physical body. It jangled as the loose voidseeds were jostled by his movement. The abandoned flesh collapsed and rotted, triggering a beam of pure white to erupt from his mouth. Blazing from the stored energy of all the voidseeds, the beam severed the heavens. The sky parted and fell off like curtains opening which revealed a bunch of gigantic people standing around. They all looked down at him in surprise and he woke.
He took another trip out of the game and back in. He didn't even really notice it much anymore, it barely felt any more disruptive than getting out of bed on a cold winter night.
Asleep once more, he dreamed that the voidseed inside him lit up until it violently rattled with energy. It began to burn within him. He could see the inside of his cell, what should be pitch black was lit a gray-purple haze and yet everything was just barely visible. Harding couldn't move, but he was awake.
A low zipping sound could be heard, as if someone was sawing wood in the hall.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Harding fought the instinct to panic. Whatever was happening, it would happen.
This is just Life being Life.
He smelled it first, before he could see the smoke rising from his chest. Searing meat, a familiar hell. It smelled like ribs, a thought he found disturbing.
Something is here.
He couldn't turn his head to look but he felt it, the presence. He knew this feeling of something else being in his cell. It too had happened before. And now something was here again watching him as his insides cooked.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Two great canine heads slowly came into view. They made Harding think of Hyenas, but they were far too large. Too large to belong to bodies that would even fit in his cell. Yet there they were, hovering over his bedside watching him cook with lolling tongues. He watched them salivate and felt the wetness of their drool drip on his skin. Their saliva, itself superheated, ran in rivulets down the outside of his body.
And then Harding's chest burst in a geyser of blood and gore.
Pain seared his mind but he couldn't look away as he splattered the hyenas with himself. They licked their lips, tasting him from their own jowls. Harding expected to be consumed but they only watched and witnessed his misery. Harding expected to die, but he persisted in his agony.
Just endure.
He'd tempted fate, sleeping with the voidseed inside and now he would die. Instead, he suddenly bucked in bed as every muscle maximally contracted suddenly. He woke and bound into the air from the muscles all having suddenly contracted. A wisp of something crossed his mind as he laid there breathing heavily, a faded voice raspy like a saw.
Harding gasped and sat up, trying to relax his frantically racing heart. He was sweating and awake with a crispiness of consciousness that seemed as unnatural in occurrence as it was unusual in experience. His mind picked through the night with clockwork precision, remembering and storing every detail. There was none of the usual fogginess to the memory of a dream. It was literally seared into his mind.
That voice though, it was the saw he heard before. It had been chanting, soft and low, and only in that moment of absolute clarity had he faintly heard its singular, repeated word.
Suffer
However concerning Harding might find it, there was nothing he could do. Leaving his cell, not wanting to have that happen again so soon, Harding found the Solar garden's darkness softened by the pre-dawn light. He walked to his favorite rock above the water and sat.
Fear pushed at him, demanding he remove the voidseed. He came close to giving in to it several times, but he did not. Scanning himself, everything seemed in order but his mind still itched with the memory of how appealing the smell of it cooking his insides had been.
That's so fucked up… Maybe I should check it, I'll put it back in after.
But he did not.
He cast his focus outward and his spirit with it. He threw it with abandon and pulled it back. Set to a rhythm, he stopped judging the experience and just let it pass. There was a profound sense of harmony in it. It wasn't the empty-minded peace bringing some sage understanding of oneness that he had been told throughout his life he must achieve to be actually meditating.
It wasn't an empty mind that brought him peace, but an emptiness of need.
He just watched the experience of life flow through him and did not judge it. He did not catalog, name, or focus. He wasn't even sure if he was actually keeping any sort of rhythm with his spirit, but he didn't want to think about it. It didn't matter, it just was.
It kind of feels like fading into the ISR.
And when he stopped he was aware of what had been and what was. His casting out and pulling in had been pumping spirit through him. Pulling ambient energy in, overloading his spirit body and bleeding off the excess out the top of his head. It humored him a little, that through all his efforts he had trained himself to be a spirit fountain for the garden.
And now it was time to live.
He cycled offline for food and freshening and then came back. He found food in the mess hall of the temple and then slipped away before anyone could question his escape. He had wanted to return Randal's voidseed, but didn't want to enter his cell. His compromise was to leave it on his cot in plain view.
Technically, we aren't supposed to take them out of the temple and it isn't mine.
Harding walked through the Old Market district, busy already with merchants preparing for the next day of sales, and then slipped in the backgate of the Guard association. He found Master Sancliff sipping coffee from a mug while sorting through paperwork. The trainer looked up and smiled, glad to have an excuse to put the paperwork aside.
“Morning, Sir. What have you got for me today,” asked Harding cheerfully.
Sancliff looked at him, his always appraising eye somehow different. Harding could see Sancliff's attention to his unusual demeanor. Harding was not really a morning person. “A job,” he replied, eyeing Harding suspiciously.
“A job?”
“Yep. Here is the posting,” the trainer said as he handed him a piece of paper. “Go in, go to the Member’s desk and turn in your posting to get work details.”
Hesitation started to creep in and Harding worried, “I haven’t learned combat yet though.”
“Bah. You wont need it, this is a job as a porter.”
“What’s that?”
“You carry stuff.”
“So I’m going to be carrying some heavy bag for a rich guy?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so."
Harding glared but saw that Sancliff was amusing himself by trying to goad him. He relaxed and shrugged, as if that explanation was enough. Sancliff sighed, robbed of his fun, and explained, "It's an excellent exposure to what it's like being out on a contract without actually facing combat.”
That actually makes sense.
Harding asked, "Any advice?"
“Yeah, pack your own food and water. Clients rarely plan for you.”
"I have to carry my own stuff and theirs?"
"Fun, isn't it."
“Sounds great. I didn’t bring my pack though.”
“Oh. Here. Happy Birthday,” said Master Bradon as he kicked a small backpack over to Harding from underneath his desk. He had clearly prepared for this.
“I’ll see you when you get back. Just remember: Porters carry stuff, they don’t fight," Master Sancliff reiterated.
Harding hoisted his pack and walked across the courtyard to the backdoor to the Trade Hall. While Harding had hesitated to join the association, he had filed the paperwork as it was free and without binding requirements. Inside, he found a free clerk and handed her the paper. The clerk quickly scanned the job order, turned around and replaced a blue tack with a green one on a listing posted on the wall.
Harding wondered at not having to show his membership card. Not that he had one yet. He'd been told there was a three week delay.
If they didn't even ask to see it then why do I need it?
The clerk turned back to him. She handed Harding a flag the size of a handkerchief that was made up of four boxes. Two were purple, two were black and yellow checked, in alternating patterns. “Head to the Green Hills gate, your client will be there with a matching Guard flag. You better hurry up to not be late,” she said in a tone that clearly communicated it was no real concern of hers how badly he failed.
Harding left the hall in a fast walk. He knew of the Green Hills district, but hadn’t yet gone there. It was mostly high end housing as far as he knew, which held no interest or use to him. It was across the Bres river from the rest of the city, but had its own walls and bridge. A creation made by and for people who had enough money to do something about wanting to benefit from the city but to not actually be inside the press of the city.
The elites.
Harding walked across the long bridge, built wide enough to accommodate carriages in both directions and, just barely, foot traffic beside it. The bridge was tall enough that river barges could float under to dock at the Old Port district just south of it. There wasn't much to see in the district itself, as it was indeed almost entirely individual compounds behind their own walls. Many of the gates were manned with menacing guards.
I wonder if they're association members…
Harding had walked as fast as he could and was slightly out of breath by the time he made the gate yard on the far side. Though it didn't relieve his anxiety that he was late, he saw no group of people waiting around other than city guards at the gate.
Unsure what to do, he asked the guards about a caravan leaving and one chuckled at him. The other said, “No caravan is going to leave from this gate, unless you mean some minor noble going for a ride with a great retinue of servants behind him.”
“That could be it, have any left this morning,” he asked.
“Sun’s barely up,” observed the guard.
“Yeah…” Harding agreed.
“Nothing happens here between early morning and late morning,” declared the guard confidently.
"Now, midnight to early morning is a different story," confided the first guard, which earned him a kick by the third.
Harding sat on a bench and waited, hoping he hadn't messed up his first contract. The guards seemed so sure, but Harding wasn’t comfortable just relying on that generalization. They didn't have anything at stake.
There was no traffic though for a half an hour, not a single person. Which left Harding feeling more confident in the guards, but bored. Absolutely no traffic at an open city gate seemed ridiculous. Individual people eventually walked by, but they appeared to be more likely manor staff as their clothing was simple and muted.
It was over an hour before two men-at-arms and a teenage boy in armor showed up. The boy wore the first plate armor Harding had seen at all, red enameled and evidencing artistic flares Harding was taken aback by the martial opulence of it. The youth’s helmet was off, revealing his soft face and a shock of wavy blond hair.
Beside him was a lanky fellow, colorfully dressed in an array of warm tones. His dress implied some degree of armor, but not enough actual protection to be of particular note. Harding doubted very much the effectiveness of a few choice and stylish pieces of leather at keeping you alive. The colorful one also wore a wide brimmed hat adorned with a great feather of some unknown bird.
Gregor would love that hat.
Following the two by a pace was a nondescript guard. He wore a broad mix of armors, all clearly used, with the only nod to aesthetics being that the plates had been hastily painted red. The red didn't match the teen's plate. The armor was maintained, however, and more like what Harding saw at the arena.
Working armor, not display.
They stopped at the edge of the yard, where the man talked quietly to the boy while the boy fumbled around in his pack. Eventually, he pulled out a piece of purple cloth and turned to the instructor. Whatever his question, the answer had him turn around and put the flag on a clip of a short flagpole behind them. Harding had seen those poles at all the gates, but hadn't really considered their function. The flag matched his, so Harding got up and walked over to them.
“Uh, hello. I’m from the Guard corps. My name is Harding,” he said tentatively.
The Silent guard glanced at him and then looked away disinterested, while the Instructor examined him carefully before stating, “You’re not a Guard.”
Harding tried to explain the situation with a positive attitude, “No Sir, not yet, I’m technically here as a Porter with the Guard corps while I train.”
“You’re wearing monk’s robes.”
“Yes Sir, I’m still in training with the temple and with the association.”
“As a porter?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Jarred, come take charge.”
The teenage boy got off his seat and walked over. His glance at the instructor wasn't returned, so he simply requested, “Please show your Guard badge.”
“I don’t have one yet. They said it would be three weeks… but I have this,” Harding said and produced his flag.
Silent man snorted.
The boy asked, “You’re new to the Guard?”
“Yes Sir, I'm still training with Master Bradon Sancliff.”
Instructor declared, “He’s a Guard.”
Silent man muttered, “Three weeks,” while watching a couple of men walking through the ward instead of the exchange. Silent seemed dangerous to Harding, like a predator who was lounging after a kill. He leaked little ripples of spirit every now and then, like he was absently revving his spirit. Harding had spent enough time at the Grinder parties to know the feel of the dangerous ones.
Instructor felt more like a noble house staff or advisor. Loud and confident, yet deferential. The boy was obviously some sort of noble's son, but hard to read. He didn't seem unfamiliar with what was going on, just unused to doing it himself. But behind that awkward exterior Harding noticed how fluidly he moved in his armor.
“I’m Jarred Garnet. This,” he said while indicating the Instructor, “Is my man, Philip de Cartier. The other is one of my house guards, Rhett.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sir,” responded Harding, unsure of the proper protocol.
“Did another from your association come with you,” asked Jarred.
“Ah, no Sir. I was just handed this assignment this morning and ran here alone," Harding explained. He added, "I don’t know about anyone else.”
“Then we shall wait awhile to see if he arrives,” Jarred said, though he glanced at Philip for confirmation immediately after. Philip nodded slightly but otherwise tried to look uninvolved.
Definitely his instructor.
They sat watching the ward, Rhett and Harding in silence while Philip and Jarred whispered while huddled under the shade the wall provided with an eastern sun. After nearly an hour passed, Philip leaned over and spoke softly to Jarred. “Looks like no one took your contract, young Master. We can press on or you can pay the porter and cancel this outing.”
“No, we’re going. The three of us are strong enough for local issues,” Jarred sternly affirmed. “Though I do regret the association failing to fulfill the contract.”
Philip nodded slowly and then replied cautiously, “Yes, that is most regrettable. However, you did choose an Opportunity contract instead of an Association contract. Those do tend to attract less attention.”
“I know, Philip," Jared sighed in apparent frustration. "Mother was already disapproving of my intent. I was trying to keep the finances at a minimum.”
“Indeed.”
Philip then turned to Harding. “Monk, you worship at the Temple and not the Church, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which Temple?”
“Okkor, sir.”
“You are learning to be a Spiritualist?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can sense Auras?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me Rhett’s.”
Harding turned to Rhett, who glanced over at him, amused. “By your leave, Sir,” Harding asked.
Rhett snorted.
“Master Jarred has given you permission by my asking, young monk. I realize you might be unaccustomed to noble protocol,” Philip informed him. He had tried to sound neutral, but it still sounded haughty to Harding's ears.
“I apologize, I am new to the city and have spent most of my time in the temple," Harding replied flatly. He could play a role.
Harding opened up his senses and turned his awareness onto Rhett, touching his spirit body to the man. Rhett radiated green, strong and proud. Though there was noise and variegations in the shade, he was adamantly and thoroughly green.
“He's completely green, Sir. A Pure, but not an Archon.”
“He will do, Master,” Philip told Jarred with confidence. Then he turned to Harding. “You need not call me Sir, only take my word as if it was from your employer. Master Jarred is the only one for whom protocol demands honorifics.”
Harding nodded.
“Can you tell me the seed type and sequence for Rhett,” Philip asked.
Harding blinked and stared at the man for a second. Determining sequence was beyond what Harding had even heard of and yet this man just assumed he could. “Uh, no si- uhm, no. Though he comes off very firm, so I think Platinum in the Heart?”
Philip smiled and shook his head, though it wasn't readily clear if the response was a negative or just amusement at his fumbling answer. “That’s close enough. It shouldn’t matter today, I was just curious how advanced you were.”
Philip looked to Jarred and the young noble looked confused for a moment before he realized his function. “Very well then, we shall be headed out now.”
Harding tried very hard to not scowl at it all.
Philip nodded at the noble boy, who stood up and stretched. Harding went to pick up the noble’s pack when Philip commanded, “Hold. The young Master will carry his own for training purposes.”
Not complaining, but then why am I here?
And with that everyone shouldered their own pack and headed out the gate. Rhett taking the lead, then Jarred and Philip shoulder to shoulder. Harding brought up the rear.
Harding could feel a slight phantom pain in his ass burning as they walked through the gate.
Ah, memories.