“Have I told you how I met this boy, Melfina?” asked her master. They were still waiting for the boy to wake.

“No master. I have to admit I’m curious why you’ve given him such special treatment.”

“Hmmm. When you wander and come upon a town in trouble, besieged by bandits or beasts, do you leave them to struggle?”

“No, master. Of course power is meant to be used. It is the role of the good to fight against the evil. The just against the wicked. That is how heroism is born and strength tested. It is how we prove our worthiness to ascend.”

“When you pass a beggar, overburdened by the pain of life, do you save them too?”

She paused. “We are all given paths to walk. The sages speak of threads that bind fate together. Who am I to change someone’s fate? And you know that I rose up from destitution and pain myself.” She itched at the scars hidden beneath her vambraces. “I know that one can choose to rise, or wallow. Why save someone who refuses to save themself?”

“Hmmm, I wonder what the difference between those two situations really is.” He ran his long fingers through his beard. “When I travel, what do I look like to you?”

“A hidden master.”

“Haha. I can’t be much of a hidden master if I look like one.”

“I mean-”

“No. I know what I look like. I look like a crippled beggar.”

Why would he talk so derisively about himself? He who held the light of the heavens in his body, he who communed with Awakened Beasts, he who had unknowable wisdom yet walked as a man.

“The reason I look like a beggar,” he continued, “is because I am one. As you suspect, child, I once sat upon the threshold of the gods. My Master… he was like a star that could swallow the heavens if only he hungered for them. Infinite power and infinite restraint. Wisdom and sight untold. His gaze brushed light and dark, high and deep–it was said to surpass even that of the Watcher. He could twist your soul with a smile and stand tall under the weight of dragons. This lesson, of weakness and poverty and power that I couldn’t touch was his final gift to me. A gift I am only now beginning to understand.

“I resented him. When he cast me down. Cast me out. When every day was pain. When I, an Immortal at the cusp of true power, was powerless and weak and alone. Spit upon, scorned, crippled, beaten.

“You have a rare gift, Melfina. Your eyes can see what most cannot. Even many in the immortal lands failed to see the Heaven’s Fire that burns within me. But you did. When we met all those years ago. When you were yet younger than you are now. Angrier. I admit, it felt good to be recognized once more.”

Melfina would never forget that day. When her life had changed. When her cursed eyes had shown her a being filled with light.

“In those years, there were plenty of kind people. Those who shared their bread or their roof. The wandering sand-singers who took me as their own. For all who dwell in the deserts of Kal’taroh are family. Life in a sea of unlife.”

What a treasure to hear her master speak so freely of his travels.

“Yet, after so many years wandering, I was ready to die when I reached Katarn. I was ready to give up. My Master’s lesson eluded me still.”

Her eyes teared up. To think her master had been suffering so all this time.

“Then a boy who had lost everything. A boy weaker and more ragged and pathetic than I. He offered me his shelter in the night. The next day, he lifted you from a gutter and brought you to safety. To think, a powerless street rat, saving a dying Immortal and a renown martial Hero! And then I heard his music, and in it sang his soul. I finally started to understand.”

Osai gazed fondly at the boy. “I cannot do much for him. His path is his own to walk. It is nearly time for me to continue my own journey. Still, I want to help him this much before I go. Do you understand?”

Melfina had felt ambivalence toward the boy at first. Then pity. Then jealousy. Curiosity even. Never admiration. Never care.

But her master cared. And it didn’t seem like some kind of scheme to leverage another for one’s own growth, as was so common in the world of cultivators. Just human feeling. Desire to see good. To repay a debt, and more than that.

Maybe this was a lesson of sorts. Even the little things, the little people, mattered. She’d ponder that later. Some day.

The world wasn’t a kind place. It wasn’t a soft place. She’d grown hard. She’d had to. But now… her hands were shaking.

*******

When he woke, something was missing. Pain.

Sure, his muscles ached and his body felt all drained and worn out, but that heavy, empty, hungry pain that had been with him since the attack on the caravan was gone. It had worked.

He kept his eyes closed for a little while, savoring the moment. The whisper of a breeze passing through barren branches and rustling leaves on the ground. The chirping whine of badger kids at play, the rhythmic scraping of claws on dirt somewhere below him. The warmth of sun from above and, surprisingly, from the earth and roots beneath him. He hadn’t been able to truly appreciate such feelings for far too long.

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And there was a new feeling, like a glowing ember just beneath his navel. His dantian was whole in a way it hadn’t been before.

He opened his eyes to see Lady Melfina sitting across from Osai, sipping steaming cups of tea in silence.

He tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. Lady Melfina brought him tea. Her weapons, for the first time, not hanging from her body. He sipped and life returned to his voice.

“I guess I’m alive then.”

Osai smiled and his milky eye sparked.

The Lady smiled too. A truly magnificent thing to behold. “Soon enough, you’ll wish you weren’t.” She chuckled. “You’ll be training with me for the next week.”

“But first,” Osai cut in, “I’d love to hear one of your songs again. You’ve a rare talent with that Ney. Did you bring it?”

He had, but it hadn’t been touched since he left Katarn. He’d missed the peace he felt when playing, but hadn’t been able to afford the interruption to his breathing pattern.

“I’d gladly play for you Osai. I only regret I might be a bit rusty.” He rifled through his pack and pulled the instrument from its case.

“Nonsense.”

And so his instrument rose to his lips, and after several test notes he began his scales, and after feeling out the range of his notes–each one settling over his spirit like the worn leather of a favorite shoe–he settled into the song his uncle had left for him. Sapling Song of the Autumn Breeze.

Each note drew his pain from him, his struggle, his strife, till his spirit was weightless as the breeze that lifted the leaves resting in the clearing. And in its soaring, his spirit reached out, following the wordless call of Wind Tickles the Leaves.

They were all of them one thing. The roots and the earth and the air and the people who breathed it. They were all dancing leaves, and hibernating trees, and burrowing badgers. They were all playing the song and listening and they were the threads between things too, they were whispers from one tree to the next, and the interlocking of roots, and the shining of sun and the sheltering of shadow.

And, Ren noticed for the first time, how Qi moved with the music, his own dantian pulsing and sparking and flowing into the meridians that led to his lungs and hands and into the flute and the air that passed through it, and the gentle markings along its face glowed faintly. And the trees and the earth drank in the music which traveled as Qi through the air, rippling the Aether, and a rush of life flowed into him, his dantian growing brighter, his body heating along all of his meridians, and it was only then that he remembered he was stark naked. But Osai and the Lady had their eyes closed so he kept playing, letting the song fade like morning mist once he had his clothing at hand. Then he bolted behind the tree, beet red.

Whatever warmth had been granted to him by the tree fled once he was clothed again. It was cold, and morning, and his scar was gone somehow. He was boney and pale still, from the venom, but there was a new strength in him.

When he came back around the tree, Osai was nowhere to be found.

“So, you’re going to train me, Lady Melfina?”

“Don’t bother with the honorifics. And yes. The rest of the week. For now, come sit by me.”

He sat by her, crossing his legs.

“Do you know what an inheritance is?”

Ren shook his head.

“Powerful cultivators can leave a portion of their Qi behind, infused with Will and a sliver of their consciousness and knowledge. Often this is done in special devices and allows for them to pass on a part of their path or their power. The devices traditionally used insulate the learner from the Will of the cultivator and protect them from taking on more than they can handle. Without such measures, an inheritance is likely to destroy either the mind or spirit of the student.”

Ren nodded eagerly. Was he about to receive an inheritance?

“Mupali’katana and my master contained the Will and Qi of the beast that tainted your spirit. It is contained for now, but you will need to train your spirit to maintain the containment formation. If you lose control, it will likely destroy you like an unregulated inheritance. In time, it is possible that you could develop an affinity with it and access some of the power and Authority and knowledge contained within. But even in that case, you’d be at risk of the shadow consuming your mind and twisting you into its puppet.”

She fixed him with a severe look, then continued, “Regardless, the foreign Qi will likely affect your natural affinities. If you look internally you should be able to find it.”

Ren turned inward and noticed a flickering of the internal spark of his dantian. Like a star behind drifting clouds. He tried to focus on the ‘clouds’, which yielded nothing at first. But as he sat with it, a dark ring spinning and rotating around his dantian entered his awareness. The source of the flickering.

“Our task in the week to come will be to teach you how to maintain the containment field. Now that you have an awakened dantian, you have power and control over your Qi, so enough practice should make the formation self-sustaining, unlike the breathing technique that master taught you.”

“When do we start?”

“Now.”

The rest of the morning was filled with breathing patterns and Qi cycling drills that had him gasping and on the edge of collapse.

“That’s it! Now that you can feel that meridian, keep your focus on it. Flood it on your exhale and drain it on your inhale. Very good. You’ve got a good sense for Qi control. Now flood to one end, then drain it back to the other end instead of back to your dantian. Like water sloshing in a trough. As we practice, your control will get better and you’ll be able to refine the Qi into a tight channel. Once you can do that and we’ve done some more body work, we can work closer to your dantian, and weave some internal formations.”

They broke for lunch. Melfina pulled some dried meat from her pack, but Ren had nothing to eat.

“Are you hungry, friend of the Great One,” said the male badger. It was strange how normal it felt, talking to a badger.

“I am, honored badger. But I brought no food.”

“This Bargan’atar can bring you some food.”

“I would be grateful, but might I join you in the search? I don’t want to be dependent on your kindness this whole time and burden you.”

“This Bargan’atar agrees. A good idea.”

Melfina chuckled. “You have fun. We’ll begin some rehabilitation for your body when you get back, then we can talk more about affinities and meditation.”

At least he wouldn’t have to do any more of that inner Qi work today. He just wanted to be able to breathe normally for a bit.

“This way.” Bargan’Atar leapt into the brush and Ren followed.