'All right, I know what went wrong last time,’ Curtis thought to himself doing a couple warm up hops before trying the reverse spin Alma had him working on. Two steps, a quick twist and he had enough centrifugal force to try the full move. And promptly caught one ankle on the other just as he went for the jump, pulling his feet out into a spread eagled belly flop on the tile floor.

“Ow,” Curtis muttered from the floor. He had cleared a space in his church’s basement with permission and started trying the dance that Alma had given him.

It had not gone well. Three tries and all he had were bruises. Alma on the other hand was having a great time! ‘Hehehehaaaa,’ she sighed as she finally got over her giggles. ‘Move with the wind, feel it and flow with it. The wind will tell you how to move if you let it.’

“It’s talking. I’m listening. It’s just really, really late,” Curtis groaned, pushing himself to his knees, then feet. “It would be nice if this weren't some unholy amalgamation of dubstep, ballet, swing, and line dancing. Or if my mana would give me more warning

Alma fluttered deep in his soul, bringing a new meaning to butterflies in his stomach. ‘Oh, you can hear the wind already? That is remarkable progress for someone without wings!’

“What?” Curtis asked, “What do you mean without wings? I thought I could use this cultivation method?”

Alma tittered ethereally in his ear, ‘Not to worry, it might be designed for those with wings, but plenty without learn it.’

“Fair enough,” Curtis grunted as he slow-walked through the first steps of the dance again. He could feel something stirring inside of himself as he moved, presumably his mana-Alma’s preferred term to qi.

‘It is a good thing though,’ Alma’s thought voice sounded serious, ‘Many focus too much on the specific dance and not on the senses. When it comes right down to it, the Zephyr Trail is not a movement technique even if it incorporates movement and aids it. It is a soul technique with some benefits for the body and mana, meant to allow you to perceive the wind. The true core of the technique is to gain information from even the gentlest breeze.’

Curtis nodded, “Probably a good thing honestly. I’m planning on starting hunting as soon as I get enough mana to become a first level cultivator.”

‘Hero,’ Alma absently whispered, ‘We call them heroes. There is a mana zone around here then? Hopefully a low level one?’

Curtis hummed affirmatively. “It’s an old factory site. The place was left vacant for years because nobody wanted to deal with the trouble of cleaning up the chemicals in the ground. When the rift rains started happening it broke down the poisons well enough, but it also empowered the local plant and animal life.”

‘Rats and ants?’ Alma asked with a shudder. Which felt very odd as she was still inside Curtis’ soul.

“And the mint. It’s actually one of the main mana herbs for our city. Edible, mana active, and very, very angry,” Curtis said. He paused in his warm up, having slow walked through all the steps again.

‘Mint is always proud and angry,’ Alma said. ‘This is a more active variety I take it?’

Curtis snorted, “You could say that. It tries to strangle anyone harvesting it and will plant creepers on anyone it catches unaware. It’s going to be fun. Hold on, let's see if this works.”

With that he began the routine, the quick two-step going smoothly, the twist giving him momentum and the leap finally going on the right timing. And then he tried to bleed the energy into a twisting skip motion, caught his shoe on the tile and belly-flopped again. “Ow.”

‘Hehe!’

~~~

After a couple of days Curtis felt it; a sensation of cool power washing through his body like swishing mouthwash through his everything. “Nice!” he exclaimed, clenching and unchlenching his fist a couple times.

‘Good, good,’ Alma whispered, ‘Would you put some music on and meditate for me? Something with wind instruments please.’

Curtis shrugged and pulled out his phone, the first drone of “The Clans March United” issuing from it as he sat on the floor.

‘This is your meditation music?’ Alma asked.

Curtis shrugged. “If I put something slow on, my thoughts tend to race. Put something loud and fast on though and I can batter my attention span into submission,” he said.

‘Everyone is different,’ Alma replied, ‘Alright, focus on your breathing and heartbeat.’

Curtis did so, rapidly finding the dreamlike state where he was hyper aware of his organs. He had actually done this before reality decided to flip the table on Earth, finding it a good way of releasing toxic emotions. This time though, he noticed that there were differences to what he had felt before. There were more sounds even through the music. There was a feeling of power rushing through him. And there was something more, a feeling of a breathy whisper in his ear, a presence with no form. ‘Alma?’

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

‘Quicker than I thought,’ Alma muttered. ‘Makes the next part easier. Take two fingers on your left hand and touch your navel.’ Curtis did what she said, feeling the energy begin to swirl as energy flowed down his arm and into his stomach before being pulled out again and continuing the circuit. ‘Now, do the same with your right hand between your eyebrows,’ Alma commanded. Curtis did so and felt another circuit of mana snap into place, pulling through his right arm and exciting the mana in his head.

‘Now…’ Alma hesitated for the first time since Curtis had summoned her. ‘Hold on? This probably won't feel good.’

Curtis was about to question her when his muscles locked into place. Suddenly the mana in him began rotating through the two loops faster and faster, pulling at him from the inside. The parts not involved in the loops started to feel withered and shriveled, pulled inward towards the mana loops. The worst though was in the middle, where the mana loops almost touched. There it felt as though his breast bone was being slowly squeezed into itself.

Curtis gritted his teeth as the pressures increased, the circuits drawing more and more, growing thicker and thicker, until the void in his chest felt like a nail going straight through him. He could feel a scream trying to come out but he bit down harder, choking it back down even as sweat began pouring down his face.

‘Come on, come on,’ Alma whispered. Apotheosis was a painful process, true, but this was particularly bad. ‘Just break already!’

Curtis felt himself curling inward and the loops breaking as his fingers slipped from their positions. With a grunt he grabbed his stomach in one palm and his forehead in the other, holding on with bruising force.

‘Caution to the wind!’ Alma shouted internally. ‘I call on the Anemoi! Help me in this hour I pray!’

With a shriek the wind mana inside Curtis doubled, redoubled, and redoubled again. He gripped for dear life, trying to hold on as the energy ravaged his mana lines until, with no warning, the loops touched and destabilized each other, pouring into a tornado that ripped its way out of his mouth in a single shriek.

‘...are you alive?’ Alma asked, poking inside his soul.

“Yeah,” Curtis responded with a grunt. “Sucks that we failed though.”

Alma laughed with relief then told him, ‘No, silly. You didn’t fail. Meditate for a second and you’ll see: you’re a neophyte Hero now!’

“Really?” Curtis closed his eyes and felt around, realizing that the energy inside him seemed much more consistent now. “Why was it so hard then?”

‘Would you like the good news or the bad news?’ Alma asked.

Curtis shrugged, “Might as well go with the bad news.”

‘You’re right, you really don’t have any sort of Inner Eye,’ Alma replied seriously. ‘You are as blind as a rock to mana.’

Curtis scowled a bit. “You thought I was lying?” he asked, somewhat insulted.

‘No,’ Alma said. ‘I thought you were wrong. There are many with either very weak Inner Eyes, subtle ones that are difficult to distinguish as a mortal, or mixed ones that hide each other. The technique I have been teaching you is one that is usually taught to those that struggle with such things, such as a phoenix that doesn’t really lean into either its fire or wind natures. Or for fairies that can’t decide which element to specialize in.’

‘The Zephyr Trail is a little unusual as it only aspects your mana after it gets generated by your mana spring. Most techniques change your spring itself as that is more efficient but if you use an incompatible technique, when you Awaken you will be crippled at best. Worst case? You have a directly oppositional technique to your Inner Eye and you explode,” Alma shuddered at the mental image in the end.

“So I can’t help but notice this,” Curtis said as he poked at his breastbone. He pulled up his shirt and stared at the mark that had appeared on his skin. “It burns a rather lot actually.”

Alma looked through his eyes and made a questioning sound. ‘That’s strange. And exciting! I knew that you had somehow connected your soul, body, mana lines, and mana spring, but this isn’t what I had expected. I thought you had formed a proto-core,’ She examined the mark closely, ‘That is definitely a part of your summoning circle.’

“Yup,” Curtis agreed. It might not be complete, but it wasn’t hard to recognize. Two circles, one inside of the other with the sign of Libra at the twelve o’clock position between them and a sword pointed straight north above the circles and a single triangle with one corner touching the inner circle just below the Libra sign was basically step one in making his particular ritual circle. “Any idea what it means?”

‘Nope!’ Alma cheered. ‘I’m going to have to look at it closely to figure out what exactly it’s doing and becoming. That’s the good news by the way: you do have a way forward, I just don’t know what it is. Considering we don’t know what’s going on, and the damage that you’ve taken, I don’t want you training for Apotheosis for the next few days. You don’t want the damage to get reinforced and become permanent.’

“Can I still fight?” Curtis asked. “I do want to get hunting quickly.”

Alma hesitated, ‘You can, but are you sure? I would have thought you would want some time to recover after the traumatic experience you just had.’

“Eh,” Curtis shrugged, “I’ll make it. Besides, we’re going to go through a worse pain tomorrow anyway.”

Alma frowned, her wariness bleeding through. ‘Why? What do you have planned?’

“I just awakened,” Curtis explained. “Now we have to go get me registered as a cultivator…hero…whatever. At the Secretary of State. And I have to do it while not already being enrolled in a program for Awakening which is going to complicate the paperwork even more.”

‘Oh.’

“Yeah, I’m going to have plenty of time for meditation,” Curtis said. “And I really hope you like beige as a color. Our SoS has found every possible shade of it to use.”