A Raging Torch
Recollection: Frein
Subject: Frein Nivan’s Training
Timeframe: Day 198th of 300, approx. 2 months before arrival
Day in day out, it was the same routine for the entire week—Frein still struggled to consider a week counting for only five days, so he included a calendar check every morning.
Every night, more like it.
He had learned how to Draw Siffera two weeks prior to today; the last two months were spent on minor, basic Meiyal Arts he hadn’t thought of to be interesting but necessary enough that Katherine had to force him to learn them. All the while he had to learn how to never stop Milling, it had to be Perpetual after all.
The pattern for Siffera, for him, was simple enough. His mental image depicted a picture of himself in a more defined form, more powerful than he realized himself to be in the present and in the future. A picture of himself unbound by limitations of his own physical capabilities as a human of Earth.
It was easy for him, in fact, to see this version of himself in his mind’s eye, the unrealistic expectations he cultivated by immersing himself with books and his own fantasies during his entire time on Earth served as impetus strong enough to surpass even Katherine’s imaginations.
Feeding this pattern, this vision, this vivid image in one’s mind’s eye with meiyal and pushing it out into reality was what a practitioner would call Drawing.
As a Drawn Meiyal Art, though envisioned differently by each individual practitioner, they depicted a simplification recognizable for anyone with enough experience. So, when Katherine confirmed he had Drawn Siffera properly for the first time, the next task had been to maintain it indefinitely.
Which had led to Frein struggling for sleep the entire week.
During the first week, he had failed to maintain Siffera and Art fatigue had eased him into slumber every night. His meiyal system had gained more stamina and endurance much like his muscles had since he first arrived in Schrodie’s Realm, but it simply meant he could take on more intense training regimen that resulted into even faster Art fatigue until he got used to it and the cycle continued.
The struggle prolonged up to this week when Frein opted for a different approach. Siffera was, in a sense, a stimulant of sorts. By continuously feeding the Art with more than the required meiyal to maintain it active, he increased its strength.
He became stronger, faster, quicker. As a result, he felt more alive and more aware, staving off his physical fatigue and sleepiness altogether.
Today was the third day of the current week, Greenday, as his memory vaguely remembered, and still his consciousness only winked out for a few minutes the few times he attempted to sleep.
He wondered if there would be some sort of negative impact if he fully erased the Art. But as he spent his time on his bed, enjoying a stimulant of a more preferred kind, neither of his mentors advised him against it.
“That’s sort of one way to do it,” Katherine said in a muffled voice, in between vigorous breaths and moans. She worked on him underneath the blankets for few long minutes, concentrating on devouring him and forcing him out of his meandering thoughts by dragging him into the heat of the moment.
The electrifying sensation came and he lost control in an instant, reaching dangerously close to choking Katherine. She had to pinch his thigh to let go.
After a pause, Katherine recovered her breath and slithered out of the blankets to settle snugly in Frein’s arms. She licked her lips in satisfaction and stared at him with suggestive eyes. “Want me to accompany you? I’m kind of in the mood.”
“Maybe just one,” Frein indulged. “Your teacher said you’ll be dealing with Deep Nightmares tomorrow, and unlike me, you can sleep with Siffera active.”
It had been an unspoken rule to keep the Gatekeeper’s name out of the conversation whenever they shared in each other’s warmth and desires, just in case speaking the name suddenly summoned him or her…or all of them worst of all.
One became five, and two hours later, Katherine lost consciousness, slumbering with a satisfied glow. Frein etched his fine art into memory before covering her with a fresh, warm blanket. It was too late to change the sheets anyway.
Now that he was all alone again, the Visitor decided to turn his lack of sleepiness into something productive. With a well-practiced gesture, he Drew Spatiera and tore open a small pocket of space. This was, admittedly, the most useful and interesting among all the basic Meiyal Arts he studied during the past two months. The space was still particularly small, only able to fit about five large books.
Frein pulled out a maroon tome. It had the etchings of a golden mountain on the leather-bound cover with a title underneath; The Forges of Vyndival. The book was too academic and encyclopedia-like for his tastes, but he swallowed his boredom and slogged along the dry sentences.
He knew well enough that his timeline on Schrodie’s Realm would end a few days before Vyndival arrived on Irista Nation’s farthest territory, Minaveil, if not outright in the middle of battle. Katherine had been better in hiding her anxiety and directing her focus elsewhere, but Frein had seen more than his fair share of her restlessness to keep his own anxiety in check.
There was also the fact that even after all this time, Schrodie still refused to shed light to his entire purpose as the Visitor.
So, he was left with no choice but to study history instead. Weirdly enough, none of the books he’s read so far made any mention of the Visitor.
A few chapters into The Forges of Vyndival, he felt his eyes getting tired despite his Siffera. It was simply that dry of a book. With still a few hours away before Schrodie literally painted the sun, Frein decided to take a stroll under the stars.
He stepped out of the cottage and met the salty breeze as his eyes settled upon a long stretch of a shoreline and a horizon of a star-glittered sea.
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The desire to take a walk immediately left his mind. Instead, he sat on the edge of the cliff where their cottage stood, trusting that it wouldn’t collapse under his weight. Unlike natural cliffs, this was painted by Schrodie. It stretched out far in the horizon in parallel with the shoreline.
The cool wind carrying the scent of sea and grass, the soft ebb and flow of the sea, and the vastness and openness of it all took Frein’s breath away. The thought of his own end loomed behind him like an itch at the back of his brain, but still, even after all that, even after the thought of leaving Katherine behind and the pain and sorrow it would surely bring, this moment—alone but whole—gave him a feeling of satisfaction.
Someone was sitting on the shoreline, a small entity in the vastness of a painting come to life. Of course, it could’ve only been Schrodie. But the fact that Frein could see her hair waving slightly with the breeze and swaying with the touch of the sea, prompted him to jump off the cliff.
The sixty-meter sheer drop bounced off his Siffera with relative ease, and he landed with such precision and control that he barely made any noise. Despite the safety throughout his entire stay on Schrodie’s Realm, it wouldn’t hurt to still be cautious.
It was a foolish attempt shattered instantly by her greeting.
“You should sleep, don’t bother yourself with maintaining Siffera,” she said, still facing the sea and away from him. Real, physical hands peeked out from the curtains of her pink hair dimmed by starry night. “It makes no difference whether you have it active or not when you get ambushed in your sleep.”
“I was sure you’d revert to your distorted self before I got to you,” Frein said, changing the topic.
“The rest of me are busy doing something else. I’m staying here on guard duty.”
So, this place isn’t a hundred percent safe…
“Busy?”
“Not for you to know right now.”
Frein attempted a step with the intention to sit beside her, but his instincts kicked in and urged him to jump back. His will tempered it down so he could stay where he stood instead, well behind Schrodie.
“Apologies,” she began. “For some reason, this woman chose to die without wearing any clothes. On behalf of paying respects to her, I’d rather that you don’t see her this way.”
Confusion and understanding struck Frein at the same time.
“I could…give you some clothes?”
Schrodie shook her head once, the waves of her hair swayed just enough to tease a bit of skin. “Not tonight.”
Frein was weirded out by the irony of staring at Schrodie with a proper physical form. He half-expected her to do a reversal of some kind, like instances of distortion riddling around her hair. But the Gatekeeper maintained a tangible look despite the irritating fact that he was only allowed to look at her from behind.
“Who really are you, Schrodie?” Frein knew he wouldn’t get an answer out from that, so he rephrased his question. “Who is she?”
The Gatekeeper was silent for a while. A small arm clutched a portion of her hair and she fiddled with it while contemplating for an answer.
“Her name is Kristella Irista, second Monarch of Irista Nation, Hero of Forimeyn Continent, and the one who coined Meiyal Arts.”
Forimeyn was the continent encompassing both Irista Nation and Vyndival Kingdom. That much, Frein understood.
What left him confused was how and why Schrodie chose to appear as this person. Was it because he just finished reading The Artistic Meiyal? It was the book of Meiyal Arts written by the second Monarch herself. All other academic materials that involved this discipline derived their contents from this ancient tome that was penned and published only a generation after the Divine Severing abolished their dependency on their divine deities for manipulating meiyal.
While Frein pondered for the reason, Schrodie continued her introduction.
“Her physical traits didn’t show any elven qualities despite being born a human mixed with elven blood. Instead, she suffered a minor condition, Sylvan Youth, causing her body to never age after she reached her teens. Even today, some of her descendants display some of the symptoms.
“This didn’t stop her from commanding Irista Nation. With her Meiyal Arts, she was able to expand her territory and become a hero everyone looks up to. She died peacefully at the age of sixty-eight, still looking how she looked like the day she turned fifteen.”
“So, you’re mimicking personalities to help me out?” Frein thought it was highly unlikely, but he ventured a guess anyway.
Schrodie turned slightly, revealing a small face barely formed by maturity, but the green of her right eye was intense enough to express how much she was offended.
“I don’t mimic personalities, Frein. I, along with my many personalities, are the real ones. Despite my better judgment, Kristella is a bit of the talkative sort, and without the other personalities to keep her in check, here I am spilling the beans.
“Still, even she has to play by the rules. So that’s as much as I’m allowing her to share.”
“Yeah, it’s really weird if you refer to yourself in both first and third person.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll never refer to myself as you.”
“That’s…reassuring?”
The Gatekeeper turned back to the sea. “You should really go sleep, Frein. Siffera can only keep you up for as long as your meiyal system can endure. Unlike the natives of Brymeia, you’ve only had yours for around three months.”
Frein wasn’t convinced, but before he could make an argument, Schrodie held up a hand.
“You have ten seconds to lift that box,” she said. A small rectangular box the size of Frein’s arm was underneath his feet this whole time. “Go.”
The Visitor quickly realized the box had a deceiving weight, as if it was magnetized to the ground beneath the sands. He continuously fed Siffera to make the Art stronger until he was able to carry the box up to his waist. It took him nine seconds of struggle.
“Now stay like that for another ten seconds. Don’t drop the box.”
The cursed object threatened to rip his arms out of their sockets. It was increasingly getting heavier and Frein had to react by making his Siffera even stronger.
“Now dodge.” Schrodie flicked three pebbles in rapid succession.
Frein dodged the first one successfully. He managed to avoid the second one, but the box swayed with a shifting weight and slipped out of his numb fingers. He got hit by the third pebble as he tried—and failed—to recover the box.
Lines of smoke sizzled out of his meiyal core.
“You could complete that exercise yesterday, Frein,” Schrodie said, turning back to him again, half of Kristella’s face in full view.
He couldn’t find the time to respond, too busy with recovering his breath.
“Maintaining Siffera in its bare minimum doesn’t strain your meiyal system. In fact, it can allow the system to regain stamina and endurance as though relaxing a muscle. But that takes years of practice and getting used to, not something you can learn overnight. The only special thing about your meiyal system is that it provides you the ability to speak with creatures that have enough connection with meiyal. The rest of its qualities and capabilities are the same as any other average, healthy practitioner out there.”
Frein still struggled for air, he could feel his consciousness fading. Art fatigue had settled in, threatening to erase Siffera. Schrodie simply continued on as if she knew.
“You’re riding high on the fact that you’re sleep deprived and that you can perpetually Mill. But you should realize, that unlike you, most of them have a lot of time. They don’t need to skip steps or take desperate methods and they can be content with their lives.
“You’re a raging torch intent on burning out all your fuel in a final blaze of glory, which means you don’t have enough time to spend on acquiring nuanced skills that do nothing but show fanciness in their mastery. Focus, instead, on things that provide you with the greatest impacts.”
“Like what?” Frein barely afforded two words, his world turning to a blur.
“Siffera doesn’t only enhance your physical traits, Frein. If you focus it correctly, it can enhance everything of who you are.”
Frein fell on the sand, sleep enveloped him on a tight embrace.
“Goodnight, Frein.”
End of Recollection: Returning to the Present
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