Chapter Seventeen
Opening my eyes, I could only stand frozen, my brain unable to process the calamity that had befallen me. I wanted to wipe my face off, but honestly didn't see the point, as my whole front was now covered in red and green gore that was slowly dripping down off of me. Wanting to scrub my face I could only stand still in horror as I started to feel more energy building up off of the troll's body.
Looking down at the broken body, I started to dive for the ground, but held off as I didn't see any glowing like before. But, there was definitely something there billowing up off of the torso. It felt like an ethereal stream of anger was streaming up out of the broken and bloody hole in the center of the troll's abdomen. Swirling up higher and higher into the air to form a tornado of hate and hunger that kept circling wider and wider. There was no colored glow to this like I had seen before with the green and yellow pulsing that was still coming from the glowing core on the ground. This seemed like a completely different kind of energy, invisible and ethereal it nevertheless felt even more dangerous, like a thousand spirits waiting to devour me.
As the last of it swarmed up into the swirling cloud hovering that seemed to be hovering around ten feet in the air. It felt like I should be able to see lightning crashing through a dark cloud but as I stared at the spot in the air it was completely clear. Not even the slightest distortion in the air changed the view of the giant hanging in the sky.
Glancing over at the bear to see what he thought about it, he seemed oblivious as he was just removing his paws from covering his eyes, apparently unconcerned now that blood was no longer flying through the air. As I felt the energy build to a crescendo, two funnels reached out from the storm. The larger one heading towards me, with a smaller one veering off to the side to go after the bear. I tried moving in front of him to tank it, as he had faced the troll for me. But as they both reached my chest the smaller one snaked around me unphased. Unable to do anything to protect him, I could only try to focus on repelling the larger portion from myself.
It seemed like it was trying to dive into the center of my body where I had last felt my core when it was hungrily trying to devour the marble I had pulled out of the troll. My first instinct was to try and break it down like how I had turned the Order into Chaos to fuel my advancements. But this energy was alive and feeling as opposed to the static Qi that I first encountered. With no time to think I chose to focus all of my effort on swirling the nascent energy of my core to repelling it.
Maybe it was a mistake, but with no time to reconsider, I focused on trying to bring up anything to defend myself from the tendrils of hate that were already starting to dig into my chest. As I tried again, I found myself unable to move my core at all, it was frozen like a pit of lead in the bottom of my stomach. Part of my mind immediately resigned itself to tanking the hit instead, if I wasn't going to be able to master the energy in my center to actively fight the tendrils off like a rapieriest from the middle ages. Then I was just going to have to take the hits as they came.
Abandoning my efforts of trying to motivate my core. I fell to the ground and curled up into a ball like I was back in grade school and protecting my face. Feeling the tendrils dig into my chest in an agony reminiscent from my time in the hell ball. I focused back onto what got me through that lifetime of agony. First I maintained an unwavering image of myself, warts and all. A dad anxious to be strong enough for his children, wanting to be strong enough to lead them down a path that will help them succeed in life… Without being so strong that I crushed their will, leaving them driftless once they were on their own.
After that strong center was the part of me that loved learning. I didn't have any particular interest that I favored one over the other, any new subject was a cornucopia on Thanksgiving, filled with plenty of delightful treats to sample lightly on. Surrounding that layer of self was the part of me that focused on the lessons I had best learned from my grandparents. Family first, next extended family and friends, then the rest of the world, but always make sure you leave a little bit to keep yourself going. If you give everything out to the world, it will burn you down to the quick. Holding everything to yourself like a miser is selfish and evil, but giving everything away is equally bad. Leave the extremes alone and focus on the middle ground.
Lastly I focused on the most important lesson that my grandma had taught me as a child: “Always remember, God grant me the Courage to change the things that I can, the Serenity to accept the things that I cannot and the Wisdom to know the difference. Now Grandson, it’s not the way the official prayer goes.” She said while shaking her finger at me. “But that's the way we say it in this family. Err on the side of Courage and be Serene in your failings knowing that Wisdom only comes through many failings.” I might have fallen off of believing in God so long ago I couldn't exactly remember when, but that didn't mean I had ever thought the lesson was useless.
Just because I didn't believe in an omnipotent being that counted every sparrow's fall didn't mean the underlying lesson was wrong. Feeling the tendrils of hate and anger drilling down into my core I focused on Serenity. There were no tricks left in the bag, this was going to happen, so all I could do was accept it and get through it. Feeling the tendrils reach my core, I crunched down harder as I anticipated the attack. But although the outside barrier was still there, I didn't feel anything from it, no I didn’t lose any Qi from my core. The wall of Order and Chaos seemed to just be completely ignoring the invading energy as it continued its march across the gigantic cavern towards my center.
Perplexed as I had thought that it would have been anxious to attack my core and take it over or destroy it based on a lifetime of reading cultivation novels and watching anime. I was still hunched over in agony from the pain of it drilling into my body, but my mind continued to operate on two levels, the widest outer level that focused on just getting through this while maintaining my sense of self and the second detached part of my brain that analyzed everything.
It seemed to take ages but eventually the tendrils made their way to the very center of the core. Where the little bit of Chaos I still had remaining seemed to just float there in its random pattern, held back by the ambient energy that looked to be sending it back into the middle. Hope crushed and confusion ran rampant through the second part of my brain as the Chaos Qi took no notice of the tendrils that continued their dive towards the very center of my core. Hope from the fact that I was sure the Chaos would annihilate the overreaching tendrils to confusion that the tendrils were equally ignoring everything in its march to the middle.
Quickly reaching the center, the hate and anger seemed to try to dive into a speck that maintained its position at the exact middle of everything. There where it finally encountered something that gave it pause. The Serenity, the outer part of my brain was trying to maintain, held its calm, despite the endless volts of energy that I felt running through me. Visibly rebounding, at least to my inner sight, they curled back up for another strike all the while gathering more of the energy up for another attack. Again I felt a shudder run through me as my soul seemed to rebuff the attack with its calmness.
More tendrils gathered, as it seemed like a quarter of the storm of anger had made its way into my inner world. No longer content with its scouting skirmishes, the enemy energy began martialing its tendrils into bigger cords that twisted in upon themselves to strengthen the attacks that kept coming endlessly upon my sense of self.
Here and there some of these stronger attacks began breaking through the outer shield that seemed to be made up of calm that my soul was trying to maintain around myself. Fractured into splinters I could feel them trying to wiggle their way into me, trying to implant a rage into my very essence like seeds scattered onto a field by a farmer. Forcing myself to breath both body and mind, I strove to maintain my calm, knowing that getting angry would only be throwing fuel onto the fire.
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Having trained and failed endlessly at this with my broken marriage, I could only be thankful for another good thing to come from that painful time in my life. Now no longer would I only have my children to have come from that pain. Getting over that anger and pain had been one of my hardest accomplishments, it took years of working on myself after we had gone our separate ways. It took a long time for me to come to face my part in the hate and anger that had consumed the love we had for each other in the beginning. Never being able to walk away from a comment, I was always quick to lash back. Despite having learned those lessons far too late in life for my marriage, I strove to apply them now in this struggle to maintain my soul.
Knowing that once you take that first step of engaging in the back and forth hateful comments it is infinitely harder to turn back and unbreak that egg. I focused on maintaining that shell of peacefulness around me despite the holes that were being driven through it. My serenity hadn't been destroyed, so it quickly flowed back to snap off the tendrils that made its way through and defend from further incursions. While my sense of self worked to fight off the anger and hate that started trying to bond with parts of my sense of being. Insidious, it wanted to first try and corrupt my Courage. Trying to use that emotion now that it was past my Serenity. Wanting to infiltrate it, I felt a calling speaking out to me. Saying that it could be useful, I should stride forth and conquer these weak goblin tribes. To use my rage as a shield and blow past this incoming energy and consume whatever I found in front of me. Stamping out those tendrils before they could grow into full thoughts, my mind laughed in response. Charging forth blindly is never the right thing to do, and if a charge was called for then, I still wanted to do it thoughtfully, applying the proper amount of force to where it needed to go.
Another wave of anger and hunger struck through the Serenity shield my soul was maintaining. This time striking out at the another layer of myself, trying to infect the part of me that wanted to help and protect my family and friends. Looking to prey on my fears of inadequacy, telling me that my being here was proof enough that I hadn't been strong enough to stay on earth to protect my family. This one hit harder, but I forced myself to continue maintaining my calm. Wanting to rage out that no one could have escaped that ball of blackness.
I instead focused on breathing, telling myself that letting myself get sucked into this fight was pointless. Yes, I hadn’t been strong enough to stop myself from being taken, but that anger and hate wasn't going to get me home. I didn't want to be a murderhobo endlessly killing and consuming to get stronger. For there is always someone stronger and eventually everyone misses a step and falls to another. With a strength that I had never found in my marriage. I continued my breathing patterns, let the argument go, and the tendrils having nothing to engage with soon quickly withered and died.
Looking out it seemed as if more than half of the storm of energy had made its way down to the cavern that was my core. While it had looked to be an immense storm on the outside, here in my core that it had forced itself into the storm seemed miniscule. Not even taking up one percent of the space of the massive center I had built up in the ages I had lived in coming to this world. Despite how small it seemed in the core at large, as it continued to build up, enveloping around my center. It was a massive hurricane in comparison to the speck in the center that seemed to lead to my soul.
Endless waves continued to crash down, poking me and prodding for my weak points. Tears streamed down my face, as I looked into my fears of inadequacy, that sense of never being good enough that the anger and hatred was doing its best to force its way to bond with. All I could do was focus inward to that tiny point and continue to breathe in and out, maintaining my calm. Unwilling to let the anger and hunger connect with who I was at my core sense of self.
Not trying to delude myself that I would never experience anger again. I was sure that I would, but anger like fear was an emotion that needed to be acknowledged and then allowed to pass through. It wasn't part of who I was and I had done too much work to get past that. The endless hunger for power was so easy to ignore that a few stray specks almost made their way by unnoticed. But when they latched on and started pulsing in an effort to grow further into my soul it was comic in their simplicity. The way they started telling me that only by rapidly gaining strength would I be able to find my kids quickly here, almost made me laugh out loud. Rapidly searching for things to kill would undoubtedly send me running too fast into a challenge that I couldn't handle, and the consumer would no doubt quickly end up the meal.
What seemed like endless waves crashed through the speck in the center of my core. Driving into my shield of calm, with drips and drabs continuing to make it through to test my sense of self. As the storm blew itself out, wasting its power on my shield that had been tempered by years of fighting, it began to lack cohesion and slowly started dissipating out of the core back into the world above. Unwilling to take any of the energy into my sense of self, I maintained my consciousness there until the last of the energy was gone and my serenity floated around the speck in the center like a bubble protecting my soul. With nothing holding me here I found myself back in my body, with apparently no time having passed by in my war to defend myself.
Back out in my body I saw the energy I associated with the anger and hatred streaming off into the sky, seemingly making a run for the planet above. While the body left behind continued to glow with a soft green pulsing that seemed to be more ethereal than the beating of the core that still glowed brightly off to the side where it had fallen earlier. Feeling a presence pressing down from above, I felt it start pulling the softer calmer energy up into itself. Even though I was exhausted from the fight to maintain my sense of self, my first instinct was to reach out and claim this gentler energy as my rightful conquest. Worried that some part of the hunger had managed to invade me, I clamped down on that thought and focused on breathing. Unwilling to be baited into taking a poison pill willingly into my body, I forgo the possible powerup as I was wrung out and not ready for a fight if I was wrong.
While no doubt all of the heroes of my stories would be screaming at me that I was letting the chance to level myself up get away. I ignored the shouting from the cheap seats and just focused on not falling over. Working on maintaining my breathing steady, I felt like I had run a marathon.
Suddenly from behind me came a giant ROAR!
With my ears ringing it seemed in my struggle I had forgotten about my new friend. It looked like my ally had lost himself in the hunger and anger that had laid siege to him. Turning around I saw the bear that I had named Gaian was standing up on hind legs while his fore were pawing into the sky.
No longer could I see the intelligence that I had come to associate in his eyes, so I reached down for my bear spray. Although I had only known him a scant couple of hours. Killing and retching on the taste of troll had bonded us, so I was unwilling to abandon him easily. My Left hand, nonetheless hovered over my knife. I was also unwilling to abandon my stuff in the event I found he had been changed forever. Knowing that the proper thing to do with a wild black bear is get tall to scare it, I snorted in derision. As I had no doubt that if this rage conquered his spirit, I would be in a tough fight.
The being unwilling to back down from a troll, was unlikely to run from me. As he roared again loudly he came back down on his paws and turned to faced me. I saw a spark of recognition flash for an instant in his eyes before disappearing back into mindless rage. While part of me screamed that it was all in my imagination and to hurry up and spray him, the crazier part told me to give him time. He was injured and unlikely to be able to dart at full speed to take me out.
Stupidly, I continued to give him more time to come back to himself. Gaian began pacing back and forth while staring at me every couple of seconds, shaking his head violently. I remained frozen, not moving a muscle, unwilling to agitate him further. I spoke to him softly, yet with my right hand ready to spray the second he passed the imaginary line my mind had drawn on the ground. Continuing to shake his head, he started sneezing as I continued my soft talking. I was looking to remind him of our short acquaintance, our fighting of the troll, our shared brotherhood in the tasting of troll slime, and how I had fed him a fish while I myself had yet to take my own first bite on this world. Slowing down, he started limping, either the pain started reaching through to him or my words had finally broken through to reignite our new bond. As sanity came back into his eyes he looked up at me as if to say he was sorry and with a small woof, lumbered gingerly back to the little bit of water and half an eel on the ground where he previously had lay.
Crisis averted through Gaian's strength of will, I let my hands fall to my sides and returned the spray to my hip, as I looked down at the core I wondered what those two new energies were that ignored everything but my soul so effortlessly. I stared at the glowing rock on the ground while my face continued to drip troll entrails as though only a few relative seconds had passed.