Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 12. The Fourteen Aspects.
The ‘medium-sized’ room they entered appeared to be fit for nearly two hundred people while their group didn’t need even twenty seats, but none of them worried about it as they all seated themselves at one side of the large table.
Laien, in particular, couldn’t help but chuckle a little after exchanging a glance with Anatis who appeared to be reluctant to let go of his hand. Thus, before Anatis could change his mind, Laien made him sit down and pulled over a chair for himself and sat right next to him.
The whole thing didn’t escape everyone’s attention, but although they had mixed feelings about the way the two boys acted, with Einrah frowning at Anatis’s weakness and Injar appearing to be amused at the two opposites of the spectrum, no one said anything nor commented on the situation in any way.
Siana soon seated herself to Laien’s right, while Nila to Anatis’s left. Neither of the girls appeared to be too happy with how their partners acted, but for fairly different reasons.
As for Siana, she had experienced the same feeling of anxious jealousy two years ago when Laien told her how Cran taught him how to kiss properly. Admittedly, most of the time she hadn’t been too conscious about that, but it was only because Cran left for the Royal Capital and ever since then, Laien showed no interest at all in any of his male friends. Yet now…
She had been supportive of Laien becoming friends with Anatis, but now she was starting to be jealous of Laien paying so much attention to his male friend.
She was confident that she would be able to top any girl or woman in Laien’s eyes and that’s why she hadn’t gotten angry when she found Laien making out with that silver-haired girl, Alex. However, she couldn’t say the same about boys. After all, there was almost no way for her to directly compete with Anatis or any other boy; they were simply too different on the basic level, be it looks, body type or character, for any sensible competition to take place.
That’s why… even though she felt guilty for feeling this way, Siana couldn’t not be a bit worried when her big brother was getting closer and friendlier with Anatis.
Nila on the other hand… was beating herself over her failure to support Anatis when he needed it. She had clearly seen how miserable he had looked in the great hall, but after being reprimanded by Einrah and after understanding that if she had ever tried to dig more deeply into Anatis’s past instead of taking it as a fact and just pursuing her partner of the dreams, had she asked around then maybe, maybe she could have spared both him and herself the suffering of all those years…
After understanding that, she had been unable to find any words or brace herself to take any actions to make Anatis feel better. She felt that she had failed him and to make matters worse, someone Anatis knew for not even two weeks had effortlessly cheered him up.
She was happy to see that Anatis wasn’t in pain anymore… but at the same time, just having seen how Anatis refused to let go of Laien’s hand had made her nauseous; why couldn’t she have said something, done something when she should have?
“You said you wanted to talk about the Secrets, or the ‘Aspects’, huh?” Einrah said as he looked at Rudford. “Is that how your kids call the Secrets?” he asked with curiosity, already wondering if Laien hadn’t perhaps discovered the Secrets before even meeting Rudford.
“Yes,” Rudford confirmed. “And I think their naming sense is better than our ancestors,” he added with a laugh.
“But to make sure of it, I’d like all of us to share our knowledge of the Aspects; their names and their properties,” Rudford clarified, revealing the precise goal of this little meeting he had requested to take place.
“Indeed, it’s much harder to beat a Secret wielder if you don’t know what his Secret’s abilities are,” Injar nodded and sighed silently. In the past, he would have never shared his knowledge with other Great Masters, but since their three sides were now allied, he had no reason to withhold this information from them.
“I believe we will start with the ones all of us already know?” Einrah asked casually. “The Wrath and the Tranquility of ours and our pupils,” he added with a smirk.
“Well, if they somehow hadn’t discussed it among themselves yet, it would allow them to get to know the opposites better,” Rudford said with a light laugh.
“We both are quite familiar with Tranquility and Wrath already,” Laien brought up with a smile. “Both of us have insights into these two Aspects, though Anatis is better off with Tranquility than I am with Wrath,” he mentioned without thinking too much about it, only to raise his eyebrows when almost everyone looked at him with expressions of shock on their faces.
“Did you just say the two of you can use two Aspects already?” Rudford asked, his eyes open wide from the pleasant surprise.
“We kinda got insights into the opposite Aspects when we fought for the first time… did I not mention it before…?” Laien laughed and looked away, evading a proper explanation. He had been a bit too into training and having fun with Anatis… he just forgot, okay? Everyone could forget something once in a while!
“Ridiculous,” Einrah and Ninrah exclaimed simultaneously. It was already unthinkable enough for kids like Laien and Anatis to wield an Aspect, but two of them? They had never heard of something as unbelievable before.
“Did you also forget to mention it?” Rudford glanced at Injar with a helpless smile. Injar had been there to watch the duel between the two; there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed if the boys suddenly grew much stronger mid-fight and began using more than one Aspect.
“I thought it would be a nice surprise for you tomorrow,” Injar shrugged his shoulders but was unable to prevent himself from smirking just a little. Those guys’ shocked expressions were simply priceless.
“Eh, it looks like this whole ‘deal’ is now pretty pointless,” Einrah groaned. “What’s even the point of having them compete against kids their age? The only two brats who could possibly rival them only have insights into one Aspect each, unless something I’m not aware of happened recently. They are going to crush their competition and get the top two spots with ease,” he elaborated resignedly. Originally, he had hoped to temper Anatis and judge Laien’s value through this Grand Tournament, but as it now seemed, this plan was nothing but meaningless.
“So,” Ninrah spoke up, gazing at his son and Laien with interest. “You both can use Wrath and Tranquility?” he asked as if to confirm that Laien hadn’t misspoken and he hadn’t misheard.
“Mm, I have a complete foundation of Tranquility and the first half of Wrath, but Anatis already has two complete ones,” Laien said with a smile, once again throwing most listeners into a tantrum.
“Foundations? What is he speaking about, elder brother?” Vatras inquired, no longer able to stay composed.
“What Laien said is pretty much self-explanatory,” Roderick said unironically and seeing the few angry gazed directed at him, chuckled in amusement.
“He really means it,” Rudford shook his head. “Laien perceives it as ‘a strengthened basis, foundation’. The closest comparison I can make is an advancement in the level of our martial arts, the feeling should be similar,” he explained briefly, but not for the lack of will to go in depth on the subject, but because of pure lack of information and understanding of those so-called ‘foundations’.
“Oh, right! There was one thing that made them different from martial arts,” Rudford recalled suddenly. “When your foundation is created, the rate at which you gain corresponding insights becomes significantly faster. The Aspect itself should also become more powerful, but this second thing is only a speculation on my part. We had no good way of checking it, after all,” he revealed to everyone, trying to remember if Laien had brought up anything else about those so-called foundations that could prove important.
“Faster, huh,” Einrah murmured. “Compared to you, how deep are your boy’s insights into the Tranquility?” he asked with a slight frown.
“It’s hard to compare when he uses spiritual energy and I use Qi, but…” Rudford spoke with a pleased, but also a little helpless smile. “He should be about halfway up to my level,” he said and laughed helplessly.
The tens of years he had spent tempering himself during the Great War with the Ciene Kingdom and the long hundred years of secluded meditation… Laien accomplished half as much as that in a mere two years! It just couldn’t not make him feel a bit helpless, no matter how happy he was for Laien’s exceptional rate of growth.
“Then, since these two fought on equal grounds…” Einrah murmured. “Does it mean that Anatis’s insights are less refined?”
“Actually, they are pretty much on par with mine,” Laien responded heartily. “If we talk only about the Aspects, that is,” he added with a chuckle and just like he expected, he made about half of those present very interested in what he meant by saying that.
“I already told Anatis about it, so you can ask him later if you want,” he mentioned while looking at Einrah, then glanced at Sinra apologetically; he would surely tell him about the Principle of Energy later, but not right now. At the moment, he had another goal in mind.
“You are always so nosy,” Anatis said in a low voice, but once again was forced to smile by the cheeky expression which Laien showed him in response.
He had already calmed down considerably, so just like Laien suggested in the great hall he would most likely want to have a chat with… his father and his uncle. In truth, he was pretty grateful to Laien for creating an easy opportunity for him to engage in a less problematic subject with Einrah and Ninrah to begin with, before having the serious talk.
“So how about you tell us how to create these foundations of yours instead?” Einrah inquired with a sigh, knowing very well what Laien intended to do. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the gesture but at the same time he was feeling quite annoyed to have a child helping him and his little brother with their personal affairs.
“Rudford phrased it as ‘when your foundation is created’,” Ninrah brought up. “Would it then be safe to assume that creating a foundation is not an active process, but a passive one? Just like a breakthrough in cultivation base and unlike an improvement in martial arts?” he laid out with a smile, in a questioning, amiable tone.
“Pretty much,” Laien admitted openly. “For us, the triggers were the same. For Tranquility one part is to go from a very aggravated, nervous state into a calm one and the other… well, it more or less involves understanding what the source of tranquility is for you, I guess? For me, it was my family and friends. In short, my important ones... I’m pretty sure it was the same for Anatis,” he asked indirectly and looked to his left, to then receive a somewhat shy nod of confirmation from his golden-haired friend.
“Wrath is fairly similar. One part of it is understanding what fuels your Wrath, while the other is getting lost in an uncontrollable rage,” Laien explained in simple words.
“The second part is correct, but I would rephrase the first one,” Anatis said and smiled at Laien. “It’s not what fuels your Wrath, or at least not for me. It’s not suppressing your anger and letting yourself be engulfed in it,” he clarified, by the looks of it already feeling good enough to engage in the discussion.
“Strange,” Laien said in a low voice, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. “When we fought, I wasn’t angry; it was an ecstatic feeling overall… at the moment of our last clash, I… huh…” Laien frowned, only now realizing that he had been in a misconception about his own breakthrough for this whole time.
“You are right, it’s just that I didn’t ‘feel’ angry because my insights into the Tranquility were so superior that all emotions of Wrath that could have affected me were being smoothed out,” he mused aloud, sensing as the essence of the Aspect of Wrath deep inside him became a bit more refined thanks to this recognition.
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“Mm, it was just like that for me with Tranquility,” Anatis said contentedly, happy to see that Laien agreed with his point. “I kept thinking about Nila as I tried to suppress my Wrath, so I guess it worked out to complete the first part of the foundation for the Aspect of Tranquility,” he said with a smile and gave Nila a smile, what caused Nila to cheer up somewhat.
She did glance at the armrest between Anatis and Laien though, after what she sighed resignedly. Anatis, of course, took note of it and apparently only now remembered that he was doing something pretty embarrassing; thus, he ended up glancing at Laien as his cheeks grew slightly red from the awareness that everyone here was looking at them.
Laien suppressed a chortle and gave Anatis a meaningful look. Was Anatis becoming self-conscious now that he wasn’t nervous anymore? Well, whether Anatis was beginning to feel ashamed by this point didn’t matter to him, he wouldn’t let go of his hand at the very least until this meeting was over.
“Okay, enough of that,” Vatras said all of the sudden, appearing to be rather angry for some reason. “Let’s go back to the main subject; the Aspects and the effects of applying them,” he said sternly, the tone of his words suggesting that it wasn’t a suggestion.
“Fine,” Rudford said and suppressed a sigh while looking at Vatras, Cran and the sturdy woman Vatras decided to bring along. It wasn’t his place to get involved in his younger brother’s decisions and his choice of lifestyle, but he would probably need to talk with him about it anyway. For now, however, he preferred not to think about it.
“Tranquility,” Rudford began saying. “It’s a thoroughly defensive type of an Aspect. It makes your energy more durable, harder to break and at the same time, easier to control,” he explained the most important basics, seeing no point in wasting time on explaining the obvious and unimportant details like that the ‘energy’ of the Aspect is virtually limitless and you can apply it as long as you have Qi or spiritual energy remaining, or that it brings you an overwhelming advantage in prolonged battles.
“It also allows one to defend from mental attacks which other aspects can enable to a certain degree,” Injar added from himself. “Wrath seems to have similar properties in this aspect; it’s hard to influence the mind of someone who is either perfectly calm or incredibly furious,” he said with a sigh.
“So that’s why we never had trouble with concentration when fighting you, huh,” Rudford said with a laugh, rather amused by the sour expression on Injar’s face.
“Trouble with concentration is the least adequate description of what the Aspect of Love, just like the Aspect of Lust is capable of doing to someone,” Injar said discontentedly. “To those with very strong will the effects will be negligible, but those who are weak-willed can and most often will become momentarily dull-minded and are going to ‘accept’ a sword strike or even throw themselves into flames,” he elaborated in simple words, without getting into the unnecessary details.
“Apart from that, however, both those Aspects have little to no effect on the strength of your attacks or defense, so they aren’t all that useful against true experts to being with,” Injar added resignedly, somewhat regretful that one of his specialties wasn’t all that useful.
“So, which ones do you have insights into?” Laien asked and when Injar glared at him, he smiled cheekily.
“Love and Humility,” Injar answered with a sigh. He might have decided to share what he knew, but it still didn’t come easily to be revealing what was considered to be the most precious knowledge on the continent to a bunch of kids. “Before you ask what Humility does, how about we finish up Wrath?” he suggested, trying to keep the whole subject at least somewhat linear and understandable.
“It’s nothing complicated,” Einrah said with a shrug of his shoulders, seeing little to no point in explaining something so obvious. “Wrath makes your Qi more powerful offensively, but also much harder to control. The same goes for your emotions, which Wrath heavily influences when you are using it,” he summed up briefly. As far as Wrath went, the only thing truly worth mentioning was the mental strain under which it was putting its user, much unlike the mild and easy to use Tranquility.
“It won’t be making you go mad if you fuse it with Tranquility, though,” Laien said lightheartedly, once again making the adults feel helpless.
“Good for you kids,” Einrah said with a totally unamused look on his face. “Regrettably, not everyone is a monster who comprehends a totally opposite Aspect after fighting its wielder once,” he complained, unlike Rudford having trouble with keeping his jealousy in check.
“It’s only yours and no one else’s fault that you were and are weaker than my elder brother,” Vatras pointed out harshly.
“The one who always hides behind his brother’s back should keep his barking to himself,” Einrah snapped back.
Everyone sighed a little as the two men stared at each other grimly; alliance being an alliance, it wasn’t that easy to bury all the past grudges in the matter of a few days.
“Moving on.” Injar waved his hand dismissingly. “To me, the Aspect of Humility is much more useful than the Aspect of Love. The Heavenly Flame is incredibly hard to control and manipulate to begin with, but the Aspect of Humility allows me to use it with ease. I can’t be entirely sure of it, but the control-enabling effects of the Aspect of Humility should be significantly more powerful than those of the Aspect of Tranquility,” he explained and as he did, a look of understanding appeared on the faces of the many gathered experts.
Injar had been the only practitioner of Heavenly Flame who displayed such a perfect, exquisite control over it in the history of the entire school. For that very reason, that woman had chosen him to become her disciple at a very young age. Of course, they have all had their suspicions, but only now could they be certain that it was indeed the power of ‘Secrets’ or ‘Aspects’ which enabled Injar to be so much more powerful than other martial masters at his level.
“Does Alen use the same one?” Laien asked, trying to remember the impression that guy made on him; or rather, the complete lack of it.
“No.” Injar shook his head. “From what I know, he has insights into Sloth,” he revealed, wondering how to describe this strange Aspect to the boys.
“And how does it work?” Laien urged Injar on, seeing how the man wasn’t continuing.
“I heard Alen isn’t yet strong enough to properly use the abilities of his Aspect.” Injar decided to start from mentioning the fact. “Sloth apparently should allow his Heavenly Flame to easily entangle, slow down and bind anything he wants. Kind of like a huge mass of honey or like resin from the trees, but which would still be capable of burning you to a crisp,” he described to the best of his knowledge.
Either way, they wouldn’t learn or see much of this Aspect until Alen at the very least became a martial master. For the time being, it wasn’t something they needed to worry about.
“And Laura?” Anatis asked curiously.
“You saw her already, her Aspect is quite apparent,” Injar said and tilted his head slightly, encouraging boys to take a guess themselves.
“Hm… she gave off a somewhat prideful aura, I think?” Anatis half-stated half-asked, looking for a confirmation from Injar.
“You’ve got good senses,” Injar praised straightforwardly. “She uses the Aspect of Pride, which works a bit similar to the Aspect of Wrath, but not quite,” he started explaining and sighed a little. Although he understood the nuisances of many Aspects, it still was very hard to put them into easy to comprehend words.
“To make it easy to understand; If adding Wrath on top of a sword would make it two times stronger, Pride would instead make the sword two times bigger. Of course, that also means the sword would become ‘two times stronger’, but it would still be sliced apart by the sword enhanced by Wrath,” he tried to use an example, hoping it would be adequate enough for everyone to get what he meant.
“In exchange, however, Pride makes your energy only a bit more difficult to control,” he added after a second or two.
“Huuuh,” Laien mused quietly, wondering if it would be possible for him to quickly master some more of those various Aspects. “What about Envy and Lust then? I know Master Shire uses them and I get that Lust has a mainly mental effect, but what about Envy?” he inquired,
“He never explained it to you?” Injar asked, appearing to be quite surprised. From what he knew, Shire was unusually fond of Laien; he would have expected him to tell the boy about Aspects a long time ago, especially since Laien himself was already their wielder.
“He kind of did, but his explanation sucked really bad,” Laien said with a helpless chuckle. Although Master Shire was incredibly powerful and his spear-techniques were unearthly, his teaching abilities were almost non-existent. All he had learned from Master Shire with regards to the spear was through sparring with him continuously since every time his master tried to explain something, he failed miserably.
“Uah, I must say I can picture it,” Injar laughed and so did everyone who knew Shire from the times of the Great War. “My understanding of Envy is pretty hazy too, but it should be a very peculiar Aspect. When the energy you apply it to comes in contact with an opposing force, it will automatically weaken it; and quite considerably too,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. Just like he said, he wasn’t clean on the details. However, he added offhandedly right afterward.
“To be honest, that’s exactly this Aspect paired up with Shire’s unique skillset which made him so terrifying. His attacks… even now amongst us probably only Rudford would be able to take them head-on.”
“Apart from those, there’s also the Aspect of Awareness,” Rudford brought up, very happy with how the discussion was going. “I’ve recently gained a very small amount of insights into it and I know that it should be something akin to an enhanced battle sense or a spiritual sense,”
“So, do we know details about any other of the Aspects…?” Rudford inquired and after being met with silence, nodded and proceeded to the last part of the subject. “Well, I might not have all the specific information, but I’ve at least managed to collect all the names of the Aspects; of which the grand total should be fourteen singular ones, or maybe rather seven pairs,”
“The Aspects of Lust and Love.”
“The Aspects of Gluttony and Awareness.”
“The Aspects of Greed and Compassion.”
“The Aspects of Sloth and Desire.”
“The Aspects of Wrath and Tranquility.”
“The Aspects of Envy and Empathy.”
“The Aspects of Pride and Humility.”
“Fourteen Aspects…” Laien murmured. He wondered how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years would it take for one to master all of these Aspects?
He himself had only gained some insights into two of them and as far as the Aspect of Tranquility went, he felt that he barely touched upon its mysteries. He felt that at best, he had mastered one-hundredth of it. Even if he were to somehow improve at the same rate in all other Aspects, it would still take him nearly three thousand years to comprehend the fourteen of them in their entirety!
For someone like him, who was just twelve years old, such a period of time was simply unimaginable. Also, to begin with even if he became a supreme dual expert of the continent, he still wouldn’t have had enough life to master all those insights…!
The more he learned, the more he realized how vast and boundless the path of cultivation was and the more he was thinking of ‘him’, of that man from his visions, dreams… and nightmares.
“I wish I could master all of them one day…” Laien said to himself, what made Rudford and a few others smile heartily.
“On my part, that’s about it,” Rudford said with a smile. “If no one else has anything he wants to discuss, I suggest we finish the meeting here.”
The brief moment of silence during which everyone looked at each other’s faces answered Rudford’s question by itself. Thus, everybody began standing up and getting ready to leave; also, just like intended, Laien finally released Anatis’s hand and exchanged an amused glance with him; though he was more amused than Anatis, that was for sure.
“We will be staying here for the night,” Ninrah mentioned while looking at the two boys out of the corner of his eye. “If you want to talk, just ask some servants where out rooms are.”
Anatis’s face changed slightly, but this time he took a deep breath and kept his cool. “If you have time, can we go talk right now?” he asked, seeing no point in delaying the matter any further. The longer he hesitated, the harder it would be for him to bring himself to actually go through with it.
Ninrah smiled softly and took a look at his elder brother, who snorted and shrugged his shoulders in response. “Come,” he said with a light chuckle and gestured Anatis to follow, thinking how sometimes his elder brother could be so immature despite his age.
“And so they went,” Rudford said as approached Laien. “I hope everything turns out well between them,” he said with a sigh, then changed the subject.
“Would you rather prepare for tomorrow, or do you want to spend the rest of the evening chatting with those guys?” he asked with a smirk and looked in the direction of Cran and the two disciples of Roderick’s, Kuan and Shei. “I’m pretty sure they would prefer the latter option,” he added, aware how well Laien had been getting along with those three when they were around.
“I wanted to meditate on the Aspects and maybe get some insights into a new one, but I guess it can wait,” Laien said cheekily. “It’s not like I’m going to master them all so easily anyway, so there’s no hurry,” he mentioned with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Good.” Rudford nodded. “Just like Einrah and the others, we will be staying in Sinra’s mansion, so if you need anything you know where to look for us.”
“Kay,” Laien smiled at Rudford, then said a brief goodbye to all the adults leaving the room. He was a little surprised to see that Siana and Nila both left without saying a word, but he didn’t think much of it and turned his attention to the three who remained with him.
“How about we stay here? We could sit by the fireplace,” he suggested to the three. There wouldn’t be much of a point in taking them to ‘his’ room in the mansion and Red Dragon School was much too far away to go there. Since it was like it, then why not just stay where they were? Or so was his reasoning.
“You didn’t even greet us properly, you know?” Shei pointed out wryly as she brushed away a strand of her long hair from her face.
“Yea, long time no see,” Laien waved his hand carefreely and chuckled to himself. “Come already, or do you want to talk while standing?” he said on his way towards the fireplace.
“You haven’t changed, have you?” Kuan pointed out with a helpless laugh.
“You thought he would change?” Cran asked with a smirk. “If anything, it seems he has become even more cheeky with age,” he complained humorously.
“Say the guys who are the unquestioned example of well-behaved adults, huh?” Laien jabbed back, quite sure that these three weren’t much less frivolous than he was.
“You’ve got a point there,” Shei agreed with a laugh and sat down on the blanket which Laien had just taken out of his interspatial ring and laid out on the floor.
“So, how about you tell us what in the world happened that things ended up as they are?” Kuan suggested impatiently.
“Hm? No one told you yet?” Laien asked, quite surprised by this fact.
“Master Rudford said that it’s a long story and we should ask you about it,” Kuan said resignedly. “Master Roderick told us the same thing with an amused smile and we weren’t brave enough to ask General Vatras,” he added with a weak laugh.
“I can tell you, but’s a long story…” Laien mused aloud and glanced at the three with a cheeky smile.
“Stop making fun of us and start speaking,” Kuan said rather helplessly. Laien’s personality was becoming more and more like Rudford’s, wasn’t it?
“Okay, sure.” Laien chuckled and began telling the story. “I guess it all started when Tin’Long promised to show me and Siana around the Two Weeks City…”