- Sam -
"You boys know what I'm here to do, right?" the old man laughed, "Kekekeke!" He held up his arms, and began vocalizing a chant in an ancient tongue. As he did so, another old man came up the mountain, and joined him. The second old man looked the same as the first, with leathery skin, short grey hair, and tattered clothes. They began dancing around each other, stomping their feet in unison.
"Merge your spirits, boys, and ready yourselves! Kekekekekeke!" one of the old men shouted, as their chanting grew louder. Their voices were reaching a crescendo, and they were echoing across the mountaintop in a thunderous harmony. The chants sounded like they were coming from everywhere all at once, as if there were a hundred old men, all chanting, and stomping their feet.
The boys merged their spirits, and watched in awe as they did. The old men seemed to change. There was one man, but also many of them, at the same time. The chi swirling around the mountaintop was swirling in a visible range of kaleidoscopic colors that filled the air. Every tree and blade of grass spit out its own chi to join the polychromatic orchestra.
They watched as the skies darkened, but the chi in the sky grew bright, and chaotic. The boys' hairs stood on end, and their skin began to tingle. As the chorus of sound and color reached its climax, a great bolt of lightning tore from the heavens, splitting in two as it descended, striking the boys with a heavenly blessing. Sam and Kyle felt the electricity arc through them. Their chi was circulating rapidly to guide the lightning through their cores.
A fire radiated through their spirit channels, tearing through their bodies. When it reached their spirit roots, they felt something rip open inside of them. They cried out in shock and pain, but their voices only joined the echoing chorus of the old men, and the drum beats of the thunder. Lightning was now striking the mountain all around them with blinding flashes of white and blue as it tore holes in the surrounding earth.
Kyle and Sam could sense each other through their held hands, which were gripped tight. They could feel a new connection as well, where the lightning had ripped open their spirit roots. Inside the deep well of their spirit roots, which always drank their chi thirstily, they could feel something like an open door. Chi flowed in both directions through those doors, forming a new chi channel directly between their spirits.
They had been prepared for this. They knew that if they were granted a medicineman, or any form of guide, they might be given the blessing of lightning, and the library books had predicted what might occur.
As the chanting decrescendoed, the lightning began to dissipate. The fire in their spirit channels calmed to a tingle. The boys let go of each others' hands, and as they did, blue electricity crackled between their separated palms. They did feel their spirits returning to themselves, however their connection remained. Even without contact, the electricity continued to arc between their bodies, and the chi circled through their new spirit doors. Their hair still stood raised, and their skin still felt prickly.
They looked up to their elders, whose chanting and dancing finally stopped. They still appeared to be paradoxically many, yet only one at the same time. The old men all stared down at the boys, then spoke in hundreds of voices, "Y'all have heavens blessing now, but I think I'll add my own as well. Kekekekeke!"
It was eerie to hear that laugh now. As it came from so many voices, it sounded like a pack of coyotes barking as they hunted their prey. The boys remained still, and waited. The old man placed a hand on each of their heads, and began a new chant. This was more soothing than the last. The echoing of the hundreds of voices pittered and pattered. The chi swirling in the air flowed and splashed against the ground. Soon the aura of chi around the clouds changed and water began to fall. The rain came down faster and faster with the increasing rhythm of the old man's chanting. The wind began to blow, turning the rainfall into a torrent. Before long, there were rivers forming on the mountain. Their formation flags were swept away, and their hair blew around like whips. Dirt and water blew into their eyes. They were held in place by the power in the old man's hands, so they sat statuesque in the windy deluge, as new chi flowed into them. This chi was unfathomably ancient. Its power was beyond imagining.
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They felt like dust before a broom. They closed their eyes, turning their attention inwards to what was happening inside their bodies. The chi flowed into them outside of their control. It searched and found their spirit roots, then planted itself inside their spirit doors. A sliver of chi was broken off, rooted in place like a seed. The chi flow moved back out of their dantians, then flowed to their eyes where it planted itself again, but this time a thread was formed. The thread connected their eyes to a place in the center of their skulls, which felt similar to the dantian in their cores, but this place felt undeveloped. The flow of chi disconnected from the occular thread, then moved down to a place next to their hearts. This also felt similar to the dantian. It was a bit larger than the one in their skulls, but still felt unnurtured. The flow wrapped a web around each of their hearts, attaching a thread connected to that dantian-like place next to the heart. After disconnecting, the flow retreated back to the old man.
The rainfall slowed, and the wind abated, while the old man's chanting stilled. "Open your eyes," he commanded. They did, and the world was still a maelstrom of color, with the strange paradoxical old man who was also hundreds of old men, standing in front of them. "Feel the upper dantian. Y'all haven't cultivated it before, but you should sense where it is now. Circulate your chi through it."
They followed his instructions, and they felt their own chi merge with the chi the old man had planted there. As they did, it was like opening an instruction manual. They immediately understood what the old man had done. To test it, they circulated their chi through the indicated pathways, and it was like a switch was flipped. The spectrum of visible chi disappeared, and the old man who was many men became just two men again, standing a few feet in front of them. Oddly they could still feel the now drizzling rain and the breeze, but they could no longer see nor hear it. "Good, keep going," the two old men said.
The boys continued following the implanted directions. They circulated the chi from their newly unveiled upper dantian, down to their middle dantian, connecting the two points. They then followed the indicated pathways around their hearts. Another switch was flipped, and now they felt completely dry, but the wind still blew.
Next, they completed the circuit by connecting their already cultivated lower dantian, which held their spirit roots, to the middle dantian, and the wind stopped. Finally they reopened each of the pathways in turn feeling the changes as the wind, and the rain returned. This time, when they looked at the many old men, they saw that between each of them was a strand of chi that they hadn't noticed before. The old men were all connected. When they looked between their own bodies, Sam and Kyle saw that they had a similar strand of chi between them.
"We are many, but we are one. We can be killed, but we can never die. We always see the truth, and we can also hide. We are Coyote, the ancient one," Coyote said before pausing. The boys weren't sure what to do, so they just sat still. The old man, Coyote, looked impatient, then spoke again in his myriad voices, "Are y'all gonna accept our blessing, or what?"
Sam and Kyle kowtowed without hesitation, "We accept the blessing of Coyote!"
"Kekekekeke!" He laughed, "Goooood," he said, drawing out the word, "now shut it all down so I can tell you what it is."
They 'shut off' all the pathways again. The wind and the rain abated once more, along with the colorful chi that had been flowing through the air, and on the ground. Coyote's confusing paradox resolved until he was just two identical old men again. The only that didn't return to normal was a new paradox they felt in their own connection. While their spirits had returned to their own bodies, they still felt the connection being maintained between them in their spirit door. They could still sense each other; thinking with two minds, and feeling with two bodies. They were two individuals, but also just one person at the same time. The connection was weaker than when they made physical contact, but they could still feel it through their spirit doors.
"We've given you the seed of our sight, so you can see the flow of chi, and all the colors of the wind. We've given you the seed of our body, so you will never die. Last, we've given you the seed of our spirit, so you can inherit our power. You see, we need a new successor, since our grandson got eaten a while back," Coyote's faces looked angry at that, but he continued, "so the first thing I'm gonna explain to you is how not to die. The trick is to keep your heart beating. As long as nothing destroys your heart, you're all good. You can even cut your heart out, and leave it somewhere nobody will find it, and there shouldn't be any problems. Might hurt a little though! Kekekekekeke!"
Sam and Kyle didn't react, but they shared a feeling of trepidation at that. They weren't going to be cutting their hearts out. That sounded ridiculous. Then, as if he knew exactly what they were thinking, one of the Coyotes said, "Here, let me demonstrate," then he reached into the second Coyote's chest and pulled his beating heart out. He held it out for the boys to see. It continued to beat.
The heartless Coyote cackled, then looked at them, with a large hole in his chest, and blood pouring down his torso to the ground. "See?" he said, "I'm A-Okay! Kekeke!"