Initial Training
> “There are no breakthroughs without risks. No achievements without dedicated effort. No wars without an opposing nation. And you, my daughters, will know that we serve to protect the lives of those we rule.” ~Monarch Denis
Recollection: Schrodie
Subject: Frein Nivan’s Training
Timeframe: Day 16th of 300, 6 months before Tryvinal’s visit
Schrodie observed the two as diligently as usual. She kept her eyes on Frein, he on Katherine; the two personae preferring to interact with the opposite genders while the rest of the Gatekeeper’s existences mingled along aimlessly throughout the realm.
Frein had been practicing how to Mill—the act of owning, amplifying, and storing meiyal—since the second day of his training.
Gathering had been as intuitive as breathing, no surprises there. It would be more of a problem if something wrong were to happen in that aspect, but the inability to Gather, and all its various terms in other disciplines, would only ever be possible on natural-born Brymeians. For it to happen on the Visitor would probably mean a premature ending to his journey, unprecedented but not impossible.
Milling was the current problem. Not because of Frein’s inability or unfamiliarity with the skill, but because Katherine insisted on perfecting the basic foundations while utilizing only the most difficult form of Milling, the Perpetual-Layered Milling.
“I wish I learned this way when I was a kid,” Katherine had told Schrodie when he asked on the first week. “Sure, it’s harder. But this way, I never would’ve skipped, or reverted to the easier forms.”
Katherine had a point, but the easier forms existed for a reason; it was because they were easy.
Granted the payoff would be less in the grand scheme of things, but as it was with most applications, payoff, precision, and even scale often mattered less when speed triumphed over them in one fell swoop. Perpetual-Layered Milling wasn’t slow by any means, it was simply significantly more difficult to accomplish compared to something as simple as Mull Milling for example.
Katherine had essentially pushed Frein off a cliff fully expecting him to fly when he barely even learned how to crawl.
Not only that, but the Seeker missed a significant point during her lecture with Frein. It could be her inexperience as a teacher playing part in her negligence, but it could also be an intentional act spurred by her curiosity.
Prodding her thoughts about it would defeat Schrodie’s own conundrum, so the Gatekeeper decided to avoid the matter entirely. Frein would eventually either figure it out on his own, or give up and ask for more pointers.
What the Gatekeeper didn’t expect was that Frein intended to ask her.
“I need help,” Frein said, climbing a small hill where the Gatekeeper waited while painting the skies. “Kat’s busy.”
“You would not interrupt your teacher?” she replied.
Frein was quiet, his eyes gazing above the panorama of space. He had asked the Gatekeeper a few days prior for a cosmic rendition painted through the skies.
Schrodie had peered into the vast emptiness of space more times than any of her personae could recall. Depending on where they looked, they either found the cold of nothingness, or the brilliance of unending colors. The Gatekeeper had painted the latter, compressing all of her personae’s various impressions into a canvas of a sky with as much intertwining colors as possible. Galaxies upon galaxies as far as the eye could see.
Schrodie patiently waited. It was seldom for someone to appreciate her work. A full minute passed before Frein came back to his senses with a deep sigh.
“Sorry. I asked her to train on her own. After two—three—years out of practice, she needs to get back to form. Besides, I think we need to cool off for a bit.”
True enough Katherine had asked him just a few hours earlier to assemble another training room. The two guests had both entered the room, but Schrodie just now realized Frein only intended to observe for a while.
“You’re very considerate,” she finally said. “How can I help, then?”
“This Milling is driving me crazy,” Frein began, taking a seat that materialized right as he motioned to sit.
He was getting more used to it and was starting to form a dangerous habit because of it. Schrodie made a mental note to make more chairs available and remind him to avoid trusting her to materialize one every time he wanted a seat. For his own safety. Brymeia wouldn’t do him such favors.
“Explain,” she said after a pause.
“Through Gathering, I’m supposed to absorb meiyal inside my body. That checks out, I can feel myself filled with it, like I have another set of lungs, but throughout inside my body instead of just my chest.” Frein puffed his chest as he breathed in. It made Gathering easier.
Meiyal didn’t enter the system through the nose or mouth, it entered through the meiyal core, but the act of inhaling—even for natives of Brymeia—gave enough placebo effect to interact with the actual Gathering process.
Most practitioners in most disciplines shun this breathing method on account of being too obvious of an act or outright rude, but technically speaking, it had no effect with the Gathering process.
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“Correct,” Schrodie affirmed. “But if you don’t Mill the meiyal after a while, it’ll naturally disperse out of your system.”
The dispersion time limit was unique to the practitioner and would even change throughout their life, so much so there had been no reliable record or breakdown or even determination if there was a pattern to be found in the first place. Therefore, it was always paramount to Mill right away.
“That’s the problem, it’s such a weird concept.” Frein scratched the back of his head. “How am I supposed to claim what’s already inside my body? Why is it Milling? Why not Accumulate or something? Or Absorb…I don’t get it.”
“When you think of the word Milling, Frein, what do you imagine?”
“Milling machines? Grinding things as fine as powder, or fine-tuning cuts around wood or metal. At least that’s what I think so. I try to powderize the meiyal I Gathered, but it feels rather whole and then they disperse anyway.”
Ah, so that’s the problem. All of Schrodie’s personae thought at once. Frein squinted. Sure enough, he noticed one of her traits materializing from the physical distortion.
She didn’t mind.
“There’s another type of milling,” Schrodie began. “Solution Milling, more commonly known as paint milling. You combine a color to the solution, hence the paint.”
Frein frowned from the explanation. The Gatekeeper expected clarity descending upon the Visitor in the next few seconds, but all she received was more frowning.
“I only have meiyal. I have nothing to combine,” Frein concluded. “Combine it with my blood?”
Schrodie was excited for Frein. The emotion revealed another of the Gatekeeper’s traits, but she didn’t care if the Visitor noticed it or not.
“You’re close, very close. Dig deeper, Frein. Concentrate. Aside from the meiyal you Gathered, what else is there?”
Frein closed his eyes. There was actually no need. The act itself didn’t influence one’s internalization, but the focus one gained from depriving one’s self of their senses—in this case, sight—was allegedly significant. Even those starting on the rank of Aspirant to Fledgling Milled with their eyes closed. Some would say even Virtuosos did so as well when learning advanced forms of Milling. It wouldn’t particularly help them during combat or other activities, but they had to start somewhere.
After a while, Frein’s expression burst to life.
“I have my own meiyal!” he exclaimed. “I have to mix the two!”
Schrodie smiled. “That is the first step, Frein. Now, your teacher insists that you combine them using the Perpetual-Layered Milling.
“In a sense, this is the most difficult among a long list of methods—even including other disciplines—but your teacher does have a point. If you can pull this off without any shortcuts, you’ll have a significant advantage.”
“How hard can it be?” Frein had left his seat to sit on the ground, intent on studying his inner self.
“Let me give you two examples,” Schrodie began, trusting that Frein could hear her despite his concentration. “Two basic forms of Milling: Mixed Milling and Mull Milling.
“Mixed Milling has a simple approach, you take both sources of meiyal and mix them without form or reason until your Gathered meiyal disperses, then you take the ones that combined with your meiyal and store them into your system to use for Drawing later. This generally yields more Milled meiyal, but of lesser quality.
“Mull Milling takes a more focused approach. You take only as much Gathered meiyal and your own meiyal as you can properly combine.”
Frein opened a questioning eye. “Properly combine?”
Schrodie nodded. “Imagine making an oil paint. The meiyal you Gather is the oil, and your own meiyal is the dye. You measure both sources and combine them in a specific way until you find the right color, density, shine, and consistency that works for you. That’s Mull Milling. It generates a significantly high quality of Milled meiyal than Mixed Milling, but it takes so long to process—”
“You end up with a lot of dispersed meiyal,” Frein finished for her.
“Exactly.”
“Then I imagine, Perpetual-Layered Milling covers both weaknesses, but it’s significantly more difficult in practice?”
“Correct! You see—”
But before Schrodie could continue on, a body crashed in between them.
Katherine rose from the crater battered and bruised, smoke rising from her body. Her meiyal core—a floating hair ornament with ribbons of light for meiyal marks—sparked in and out of reality.
“What’s with the clothes?” Frein asked Katherine, barely concerned.
“What the hell, Schrodie!” the Seeker exclaimed. Her clothes were cut, torn, and burnt, but were now mending themselves back to form, probably through the help of some Meiyal Art. “I’ll explain when you can Draw. Answer the question, Schrodie!”
Schrodie didn’t really hear a question, but he surmised it was regarding her training regimen. As soon as Frein made his approach, the Gatekeeper gradually increased the training room’s difficulty with the intent to match the Seeker’s capabilities.
“Frein said you needed to return to form,” Schrodie replied. Frein glared back at her accusingly, so he was quick to follow. “I simply thought you need your usual training exercises.”
“Not by suddenly throwing meteors at me!” Katherine retorted, eyes shifting back at Frein who had abruptly assumed a meditating pose. He was Milling…or at least, the early parts of the process, finally.
“So, I take my eyes off you for a second, and you start making progress,” she said, her eyes shifting back and forth between the Visitor and the Gatekeeper. “I think you don’t—”
“I think you’re getting distracted, Katherine.” Frein said, his eyes looking at Katherine. Schrodie had never seen such a calm dampening stare. There was no fury, no aggressiveness, just a cool and collected perspective.
The two locked eyes for a long moment. Schrodie didn’t know what to say, so both personae kept their silence and observed.
With a tsk, Katherine marched off.
“Did she just say meteors?” Frein turned to Schrodie.
“They’re roughly the same,” Schrodie commented. “Solidified meiyal that forms from Brymeia’s atmosphere which then plummets down somewhere in the Nightmare Lands.” When Frein frowned even further, she added, “It’s a place where Katherine used to work.”
“Why was she smoking?” Frein skipped to the next topic, understanding that he shouldn’t press further.
“Art fatigue.”
“Like running out of breath?”
“No. More like running out of strength to breathe.”
“And what’s with her back? Some sort of halo?”
Schrodie was surprised by Frein’s observation that another of her traits slipped into reality.
“Her Display,” she replied. “It’s barely formed, nothing like her days before she went to Earth. She’s right, I should turn down her regimen.”
“Don’t.” Frein looked at her with the same set of convincing eyes. “You saw how she walked. That was full of pride. If you take it easy on her now, you’ll just tick her off even more.”
“Still, I didn’t know she could be irritated like that,” Schrodie said defensively.
“You’re not a good teacher, are you?” Frein laughed.
The Gatekeeper thought it was a jab meant to mock her, but quickly realized he truly meant what he said. “What makes you say that?”
“You don’t remember?” Frein returned to his meditative form. “The day we arrived, you said there’s a war coming for Irista Nation. Now I don’t have to be a genius to deduce how that’s related to Kat, and I’m sure she doesn’t know if it’s right to ask or not because she doesn’t want the war to affect my experience as a Visitor or her job as the Seeker.
“I think you know full well where I’m going with this.”
It took Schrodie a minute, but the clarity did descend upon her.
“Yes. I’ll talk to her when she’s calmed down. For now, let’s finish up your pointers for the Perpetual-Layered Milling.”
End of Recollection: Returning to the Present
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