Hunter had been practicing for a week, the professor’s digression having been forgotten in a haze of ideas about synergies, and anxiety about his evening sessions with Aera. But his own practice with focusing had been going well. He’d been making steady progress, and found himself eager for each day’s practice session.
Breathe in, breathe out. Quiet the mind.
He put his attention on the body, then the sounds he could hear, and he closed his eyes and noticed the effortless darkness where once there was light.
Breathe in, effortless, breathe out, effortless.
Hunter continued the cycle of breathing, finding his body relaxing on its own. He’d never truly understood what it was like to truly relax before starting these exercises his father had shared with him. He wrote that he had learned him from a priest, during a brief time when he’d dabbled with religion, and found them to be instrumental in learning how to quiet the mind.
The key was to let it quiet itself. Keep your attention diffuse, focus softly on the inhale, the pause, the exhale, the pause. Notice thoughts as objects in their own space, separate from the breath, seperate from the body. It took a bit of practice, and he’d kept reacting to thoughts at first, thinking that’s what his father had meant by ‘noticing’ them. But then he’d realized that with the right balance of alertness and relaxation, ‘noticing’ happened naturally.
Hunter felt that this alone was worth reading the journals for.
He realized he was distracted, and brought his attention back to his body. Then the sounds, then the effortless dark, then the cycling breath.
The stopwatch went off, and he breathed out once more before slowly opening his eyes, feeling refreshed, but he also felt a bit drowsy. Sometimes, during these hour-long afternoon sessions, he would doze off to sleep.
He’d bought the stopwatch the first day he’d woken up and realize he’d slept for 4 hours. Something about falling asleep after having been in a deep state of focus would cause him to have incredibly vivid dreams. Sometimes, he wouldn’t fall asleep, but he would experience memories which would have a dream-like distance to them. Not anything significant— so far, only the most mundane visions of his past would replay for him. Finding a cool rock, staring at the ceiling back at the old Koar estate, the first time he broke an egg yolk while trying to cook for himself.
Sometimes, he would suddenly have an exciting creative insight into synergies, or understanding a problem he’d run into while doing homework for his classes.
And while he was in a deeply focused state— no visions, no dreams, totally present and alert, he would begin to feel incredible. It could last for seconds, or multiple minutes. His father had called these moments ‘Jhanas,’ and said that although they were pleasant, they were not the goal and it was important to learn how to remain focused, even in the presence of such heightened pleasant sensations.
Hunter stood from the couch and grabbed another cup of coffee. He felt that soon, his focus would be strong enough to start focusing inwards on the presence of his ether channels. He’d been doing this practice for a week, about ¼th of the time his father had recommended he should before attempting any insight training, but Hunter felt that his ability to focus was progressing quite rapidly.
Staying concentrated wasn’t a problem. He’d sought deeper concentration to work with in Seckina, pushing more and more attention into client jobs and research. Not only as an escape from the outside world, but the ability to stay focused on work for 10 hours at a stretch helped him survive.
With a coffee in hand, Hunter left his home, walking to the Etheric Arts department which he was grateful to find was located only a few blocks away. He battled himself along the way, remembering that the more coffee he drank on the way, the less he would have when he got there. Rationing his supply was essential to a productive work day.
Although, as he thought about it, he felt that it was entirely possible that a building dedicated to the fostering and advancement of artisans would probably be stocked full of coffee machines, so its not like he’d run out.
But was he really willing to settle for less than the best? His short time at the Oberon estate had changed his relationship to coffee. On Stewarts recommendation, he sampled a few coffees without any cream or sugar, getting an idea of how different beans tasted, how the region they were grown in effected the taste, and then trying them each with various amount of cream and sugar.
He found that lighter roasts were easier to drink black than the dark blends, but the darker blends were tastier with cream and sugar. It reminded him of his conversation with Trey, when Trey was telling him his dad had very strong opinions about how coffee should be drank.
He was right, it was like a candy, and even more addictive. But in Hunters view, with the right bean, cream and sugar enhanced the coffee experience completely. It was a whole new drink.
Hunter had brought along his third arm, and locked the rest of his custom tools in a locker that he’d been assigned when he’d been officially registered for the Artisanship course. Aside from the locker, they would be able to reserve a workstation for up to 3 hours a day outside of class time. It wasn’t much time, in Hunters opinion, but he’d take what he could get. The workstations were segregated, so Hunter could work in privacy.
As part of the hefty enrollment fee for the course, the students were given almost total access to a warehouse full of materials. Like the workstations themselves, there was a limit. But it would serve Hunters needs. Today he was researching more Force-related synergies. He’d had a hit of inspiration earlier, and wanted to test out his thoughts.
Hunter found that it was much easier to get into the groove after practicing with his focus for the last week. The three hours passed by in a flash, and Hunter felt a bit of disappointment. His intitial hyptothesis hadn’t panned out, but it had opened up more interesting questions that he was itching to pursue.
He needed to find a way to get a workstation in his room. Having to purposefully cut his research short felt a subtle form of torture, but he wasn’t like the rest of the students here. Most people would find the three hours to be more than enough for small projects, typically associated with class-work.
Hunter had been given a make-up assignment for all the missed projects. He was given free reign to demonstrate a working knowledge of the subject fields which had been covered over the last month. The class had done a project a week for the time he’d been in the hospital, and Hunter had taken half a day to plan and prepare the perfect construct to impress his teacher.
Why exceed expectations, when you could set a new standard? Hunter needed to earn an Excellence degree, and merely proving that he was up to speed with the rest of his peers wouldn’t get him any closer to that. The syllabus showed that they’d soon be covering wireless etherium networks. They’d briefly covered the Force glyph, with the promise of a more advanced dive into the field later in their second year, while the weeks before that were spent covering fundamentals that most of them knew already.
Hunter decided to fuse what he knew about wireless networks and Force glyphs. He used a few tricks to gain more efficiency, but he didn’t want to come out of the gate swinging synergies left and right. Like the global youth artisan competition, they would need to be used strategically. There were many ambitious people at the school, and he’d already seen just how dirty some people were willing to play to further their agenda.
One of the journals in the briefcase was devoted to all the neat tricks and shortcuts his father had discovered during his long career. Nothing like his synergies, of course, and they were probably standard at a certain level of Artisanship, but they would serve Hunter nonetheless.
Before the competition, and before observing the kind of people he was sharing his class with, Hunter had prided himself on being some unique etheric genius. But he had utterly discounted the natural genius that had preceded him. Others may not have his sensitivity, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have the same drive. Passion was passion, as Trey would probably agree.
Aera hadn’t been wrong. His peers were the best of the best for their age group, and probably beyond. The class itself was even smaller than his history class. There were only about a dozen Artisans in his class, and there weren’t many other classes for their year. In Hunters estimation, he would be up against about 100 students, all striving for Excellence.
He let his first project be a demonstration of his talent, his potential, and his drive.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
His final product was a two-part shield device. It wasn’t portable, and it was pretty short ranged, but Hunter was working with limited tools. He figured that the limitations would be dramatically outweighed by the novelty. He was sure that the technology existed, but Hunter felt like he’d broken new ground for himself, and was hitting far above his age group. It was a prototype, and he was sure that with more time to plan and craft, along with some better materials, he could improve the product by a significant degree, and that was before he started adding synergies to it.
The shield had an AR requirement of 19. He’d confirmed it by asking a few of the students who were present in the workshop to help him gauge it. He imagined that he could probably increase it to about 30, and then decrease it by another 5 or 6 points with a syntax which featured some of his secret sauce.
He figured he might actually be onto something. He would need to talk to Trey about getting in front of some Oberon Artisans, and see if they agreed with the tech’s potential.
He’d gotten full marks plus a bonus, but would still considered to be behind the rest of the class. Hunter would need to push himself to catch up, but he wasn’t anticipating any obstacles in the future. The end of year project would be a group project, and that would constitute 20 percent of his final grade.
Hunter would need to get full marks on every assignment to come at the very least, in order to ensure that he was considered an Excellence candidate. The degree of Excellence wouldn’t be announced until the completion of studies, after the third year.
As he walked home, and prepared for his evening tutoring session with Aera, he wondered what his life would look like by then. His life had changed so dramatically in just a mere couple of months.
Will it be him who earns that degree of Excellence, or will he have become someone else entirely, someone who he’d hardly recognize?
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Aera considered the walking skeleton as it heaved on the crashmat.
“It’s not time for a break yet, get up,” Aera said, watching Hunters reaction for any sign of protest. Anything more than a second’s hesitation to start getting up, any sign that he was losing motivation. But despite his clear exhaustion, he pushed himself up without so much as a complaint.
Not that she was expecting any, at this point. Any vocal resistance to her style of training had fallen away during their first weeks together. Since then, he’d quietly shown up and did as he was told.
And slowly, very slowly, over time, he would progress. The length of time the sessions took had increased from around half an hour, to just over an hour. The first few days after his recovery had been rough, but his endurance had bounced back pretty quickly.
They started the drill again. This time, she planned to throw him off a bit.
“How are you finding your classes?” she asked, waiting for the pause. He froze for a second, considering her question, realizing too late that it was a trap. By the time he was reacting, she had a foot in his stomach, and shoved him back towards the crashmat.
She didn’t take any pleasure in it. It was how she imagined it would be to spar with a child. There was no challenge, no stakes. Hunter seemed frustrated, both with her and himself. She didn’t let his attitude bother her. She wondered if he’d be able to channel the frustration into progress.
He got up from the mat without her prompting, and they went again. Block the jab, then the hook, then the uppercut, then the front kick.
“They’re going good,” he said, blocking a roundhouse. She smirked. Looks like his attitude wasn’t as bad she thought it was.
“I’ll be throwing in some more surprises, watch out for them,” she warned as they started the next drill. Hunter nodded, even as she began.
Jab.
“Making any friends?” she asked, as he blocked the jab. It was a bit sloppy. He was getting tired, but she could tell he was trying not to let it show. He didn’t visibly react to her question, staying focused on the routine.
Hook, uppercut, front kick.
“Not yet,” he said, his eyes going wide as he managed to dodge out of the way of the jab she threw out. He’d thrown himself off balance but managed to catch himself before falling over.
She could follow up and punish the mistake, but she let him have his small victory. It was important to balance reward and punishment.
He got back into position, and they went again.
This time, she started with the hook. It caught him by surprise, his first reaction being to block for a jab, and then panicking when he realized it wasn’t going to work.
She pulled back a bit on the impact, but he still winced.
Sometimes, she felt bad for having to put him through this. But she never let it get to her. It was good for him. Since he was strong enough to persist with the training, she would do her job and toughen him up. He would never be a good fighter, he just wasn’t strong enough. But he’d proven that he can get stronger, and survive more.
She wondered if their month of training had been the difference between life and death. It was all the more motivation not to take it easy on him. She glanced at the time, just over an hour. Hunter was clearly tired, but he was still standing, and still seemed to have some juice left in him.
“You’re doing better, Hunter,” she said, “a couple of months ago you’d be twitching in a puddle of sweat by now.”
He seemed taken off guard by her compliment. An opening, like any other.
“Don’t let it get to your head. You’re doing better, but you’ve got a long way to go.”
Hunter nodded, but the usual grief she’d expected to see in his body language didn’t appear. This time, he just nodded.
“You’re right. Thanks, Aera,” he said.
For all her talk about teaching him to keep his guard up, she felt her own slip.
That was the first time he’d thanked her.
It felt weird. She’d expect to feel nothing much at all, but she was surprised to find herself feeling vindicated. What was that about?
She’d take some time to understand it later. Now, it was her turn to learn. They both took some time to stretch and cool off after the workout, and then made their way to the apartment building. After the attack, they both decided it would be best if she walked back with him.
It would be easier if Barnum allowed students to have bodyguards on the campus, but some old rule which had been established when they realized that the uber-rich children would be playing political games on their campus dictated that they were to remain unguarded.
Typically, one would think that their parents wouldn’t agree to that. And most didn’t, at least until they understood that if they wanted to teach their children how to play real world power games, they would have to teach them real world consequences.
Most years, it would be fine. Violence was rare, and only happened to a few.
But this year was clearly different. Not enough had happened to justify any rules being lifted, but Aera had heard that not only her father, but other parents were starting to grow concerned over the sorts of games their children were playing away from home.
Her father was also acting strangely. He was clearly trying to honor her independence, but he’d been more insistent about her being careful then she’d expected. Something was bothering him, and it wasn’t just what happened to Hunter.
So, in the spirit of being careful, she was escorting the dweeb herself. They decided that there was no reason why they couldn’t eat while Hunter taught her about constructs. She’d come to realize that he was something of an endless font of information on the subject, and although he struggled with articulating that knowledge, he was getting better at it.
She was learning a lot, and realizing just how big of a gap she would need to cross in order to catch up to him. In fact, she was starting to rethink her goal.
Her deal with her father was that she’d only needed to earn two degrees of excellence, then he would immediately begin fast-tracking her for a board-level placement. If she didn’t, she would have to start much lower and although inheriting her fathers position was inevitable, she wanted more authority as fast as possible.
She needed to start building her network within the company. It would make the eventual handover much more efficient, and while her father was in power, it would allow her to be of more assistance.
She had no desire to take the company from her father, she truly cared about the company and at the moment her father was the best man to lead it, in her opinion. Sure, she might be biased, but he was probably the greatest man she knew. She felt incredibly fortunate to be his daughter, and would take every opportunity she could to learn from him.
Even if it meant learning how to deflate her own ego.
The more time she spent with Hunter, the more she’d started to value what he might be able to bring to the family, or the company at the very least. She believed she was starting to see the potential that her father believed he held. It had been abstract before, and she hadn’t even been certain that he could sustain the workload.
Especially after having suffered two significant attacks, one from the abolitionists, and again from Pippen. Yet, as soon as he was able to, he would get right back to the grind, more driven than ever.
She wondered if it was healthy, but so far she hadn’t seen any signs that the obstacles had been anything but empowering.
They finished their session, and Aera felt like it had been a good day. There hadn’t been any movement in her investigation into Jason, but she wasn’t expecting any for a while. All she could do was wait and see.
If he went on the assault, she would take it as evidence of guilt. If he didn’t, she would continue to wait and see.
The majority of her time had been spent planning for different scenarios. She would constantly evaluate her vulnerabilities, and would take steps to ensure that she was covered. If she couldn’t cover herself, she’d find a way to mitigate the damage, enough to make a counterplay.
It was surprising how combat could be extrapolated to all kinds of things, and if there was one thing Aera understood, it was combat.
But Jason was crafty. The social field was more difficult to fight on, the variables were exponentially more complex, but that was just a matter of experience. Just like Aera had trained her whole life to fight, Jason had been training his whole life to manipulate.
He was ambitious, too. She was beginning to think he was too ambitious. His relationship with the Visgold kid made her wonder what his family had planned. There was no way the relationship was an accident.
A family like his kept close track of their children's associations, cutting away those that didn’t serve the family as a whole.
Something fishy was going on, and Aera wasn’t sure it was entirely up to her to find out. Her father was running his own investigations, which were heavily informed by her impressions.
As soon as he found anything of note, he would let her know. But she had a feeling that something big was going down. She couldn’t quite explain why, it was a gut instinct. It made her nervous, but she knew how to handle nerves. She would play it as safe as possible, but her sense of caution was warring with her sense of justice.
At the moment, the only thing she was focused on was their image. But now that she’d shown that she had some fight in her, she might as well go all in.
She smiled. How would Jason react if she called him with an offer he couldn’t refuse?
To her surprise, Jason called first.