Mirabilis

We all sit and watch as the earthling condenses his chakra pools at an astonishing rate, seemingly without much effort. Never have I seen someone newly ascended already this hungry for more, they usually take it slow and enjoy Gaia for the first few days here at least before trying to find a path.

This Michael has been here only something like 40 hours and already he is trying to improve himself further, and all his questions seemed odd on the first leg of the journey down the mountain. A journey designed to help earthlings get familiar with the world around them without feeling like all their senses are being bombarded.

Yet this Michael seems to be enjoying all the extra sensitivity and sensations as though his mind was already ready for them. Even going through the mountain cloud he only needed minimal guidance from Estergon projecting his position. It can take years for some of the earthly humans to adopt enough to Gaia to be considered on par with normal humans.

The earth is a very quickly cobbled together world with little ether and limited resources. The humans there need to eat food on a daily basis to remain healthy, ether starved. Their days only 24 hours yet they also have to find enough time to sleep and live their lives in that short amount of time. They usually arrive on Gaia with many disabilities besides the constant hunger, the need to shit and sleep 3 or 4 times a Gaia day.

They are usually basically as children for the first year of their lives, but after that they grow quickly, gaining strong affinities to topics of interest they had on earth. A side effect of the world transition pool they use to ascend it is believed, and in no time at all they are on par with any mundane born on Gaia in ability, but usually have greater potential than is usual, an extra affinity or two, and ether hungry bodies that allow them to Awaken to Mana much quicker than is normal for the local inhabitants. A completely unfair advantage if you ask me but then they pay for it in their own way, ether sickness is a thing with people transitioning from lower to higher ether levels.

Looking at this Michael O'Hare with examine I can already tell he is so far ahead of most of his people that it's uncanny, especially of the resent arrivals. The first earthlings humans to ascend were strong and quick learners, but the standard of ascending seemed to keep getting lower and lower, yet less earthlings manage to get here anyways.

From entire empires ascending to kingdoms, to peoples, to clans, to families, and now its mostly one individual at a time that reaches the minimum standard of awakening to be considered for Gaia. Whatever the earth is becoming it's lessening it's people greatly, this Michael is an anomaly. As attentive and careful as a hunter, yet most of his questions smart and direct enough to be from a great thinker, but then he suddenly wakes and condenses his chakra like an old earthly guru.

He is definitely an enigma, and has vast potential for growth if what my examine is telling me is accurate. He has a high psionic affinity, high physical fitness, high spiritual pressure, high mental resistance, high something... I can't identity and a high something else I can't identify.

"Have you figure him out yet?" Estergon asks with his serious impassive face looking at the sweat soaked meditating Michael a few meters away.

"Figure what out about him?" I ask looking at him, we have been together on this duty three years now. This is our second last assignment before being reassigned.

"His hidden affinities, have you figured them out?"

I sigh and look at Michael again with as much attention as I can, I can't get anything on the two affinities.

"They aren't actually hidden, more like scrambled, encrypted." Jonah says sitting down amongst us in his typical stocky, half naked barefooted state.

He is short at only 5 foot 8 inches but wide and strong, not someone to be underestimated for he makes his home on the higher peaks of Mount Sinaria. One of only three known mountains of transition where earthlings can ascend. The man is old as well, he cloaks his true age so I can't really tell how old. It's been a topic of debate for years amongst the other Welcomers back in Sinai Compound, our destination.

"You won't see it with only your examine skill." Jonah says nonchalantly. "Use both examine and aware ."

I give him a look hesitating yo try. Examine isn't a very draining skill to use and puts very little strain on me mentally, the examine third eye skill being one of the prerequisites of being assigned this position. But using a third eye and crown skill simultaneously will empty my crown chakra pool because its much shallower, and the mental strain will be immense. While I debate the pros and cons with myself Rumeria actually does it without much thought, he has a much higher mental resistance than I do.

"Shit." He says leaning forward slightly.

I raise an eyebrow, my curiosity peaked by the genuine outburst of surprise.

"What is it?" I ask instead of putting myself through the looking myself.

"Storms and body manipulation, but there is more to them I can't decipher still."

"And that's all you'll get at your level of skill and power, the boy has potential look after him well." Jonah says.

Our mandate is to spend the first month with the new arrivals, making sure they know the basics of life on the planet and their options going forward. Helping them get established in a village or living with one of the Conclave or Order communities. The advantage of ascendent earthling is their lack of any previous alliances when they get here, but we have learnt that that doesn't make them immediately trustworthy.

After that we usually go our separate ways as we get ready for any new arrivals. Rumeria, Estergon and I have been together for nine assignments now. After Michael we will have one more before we can each choose different assignments, only Rumeria has fully Awakened on our trio, a mage that dabbles in hand to hand fighting.

But he is very lazy and easy going, I have never come across a lazier Awakened in all my 65 years of life. Entirely satisfied with his current station and power level in life, with little to no ambitions whatsoever. Complete opposite to the entirely too serious Estergon, at 36 he is already at the cusp of Awakening, yet they get along very well. I have enjoyed my time with them and wonder whether or not we could all be reassigned together again, though I miss my other friends.

"Body manipulation is a very useful affinity in all its forms. If he learns even a few of the skills within that path he could be very useful to the Conclave of Shadows." Estergon says seriously.

I grin at that, "I know we've only just met the man but I don't see him as a spy or an assassin. Maybe the Conclave of Wonders?"

We debate about that and other inconsequential things, watching Michael go through his chakra points one at a time. The talent, discipline, knowledge and perseverance he is showing is admirable. It proves that even though less and less earthlings return to Gaia, knowledge of how to awake themselves is still available to them, even if it's in bits and pieces.

We still have to fully debrief him on the state of his world as he understands it. The things they do on earth are always points of controversy in the conclave. There is so much that they have improved upon that we have adopted, forced by the necessity of their ether starved world to adopt new ways of thinking and new technologies. But they have also lost so much that is vital to the continued survival of their species and their world.

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According to reports many thousands of years have already passed there since the birth of their world and their histories are scattered and incomplete. A people that have lost their heritage, that lost some of the most basic of knowledge at some point that they devolved to becoming cave man, little more than animals painting on rocks with clay.

A people that has had to relearn everything from how to spin cotton and sew together clothes, to the working of iron. Many have come from what the recent arrivals consider the stone age, where even metal tools were beyond them. But strangely enough, those stone age humans make up the largest number of people that ascended to Gaia from Earth.

Followed closely by the bronze age of human history. But even as they lose many of their knowledge and history generation after generation, they are innovative. Still, they are so fragile...

I have returned Michael's weapon to him along with his other accessories. A firearm he called it, a weapon we have come across before from a previous ascended from a few months ago. A projectile weapon that could be very useful against untrained mundane people even on Gaia as an effective crowd control tool.

But as a deadly weapon it could just get him killed, something I tried to advise him about but I could tell he didn't really believe me. The weapon just doesn't have enough penetrative power unlike a proper bow and arrow though the projectiles are fast. The weapons they use against each other just prove how fragile they have become on their world, Earth.

Michael's spiritual energy suddenly shoots up rapidly, surprising all of us with its continued growing pressure. I stand to move towards him but a hand on my arm stops me cold in my tracks. I can't overpower Jonah and he must have a reason for stopping both Estergon and I as I notice he has both our arms in his grasp.

I quickly use examine and awareness , disregarding the consequences and inconvenience of having to recover from mental fatigue and replenish an emptied chakra pool. I see Michael seemingly for the first time, he is a maelstrom of pitch black clouds that seem more like holes on the reality of the world than actual clouds.

Stars and sparks seem to be scintillating within that void of gas shaped moving black voids, whatever it is I'm looking at is alive and seems to be in him, off him, but also its own thing, part of a bigger thing and its talking to him. Sharing knowledge with him, a primordial entity and he doesn't seem the least bit bothered or aware of the danger he is in. Like a toddler playing with a venomous snake.

I get swept in as well with my crown active as it is, I see/feel things that have always been at the edge of my perception and they see/feel me in return. The spiritual pressure from Michael keeps building, no one who has just recently ascended from Earth should have that dense a spirit, even if ether isn't needed to have a powerful spirit. And Michael doesn't either, his spiritual pressure is being fed by an external force, something I have never even heard of before.

His entire iris becomes pitch black as his Storm affinity changes to Child of Storms before my eyes/ awareness . The pressure becomes like a strong wind blowing past my ears at high speeds as my ears get blocked. The cavern becomes a different place, the walls replaced by the void of outer space, silent clouds of radiation and unstable electromagnetic forces and energy moving around like fish in a pool.

All the while Michael remains open and seemingly unconcerned still, even as he becomes less himself and more something else, his physical body already trailing a black smokey cloud. His eyes turning from pitch black to getting deeper and deeper as though looking into a void instead of a flat black surface anymore.

His affinity changes from Child of Storms to Vessel of Storm as far as I can understand it.

It suddenly feels like I had a hammer blow to the forehead as my crown chakra pool empties and I am left groaning in pain as the mental rebound floors me, blood flowing like a stream from my nose. I look around as I wipe my nose groggily, Estergon is also on the floor having a hard time. The carven looks the same to the physical senses, but the rigid forms of Jonah and Rumeria looking at the strained but determined face of Michael tell me whatever is happening is still happening.

Chakra fatigue isn't as bad as mana fatigue I'm told, but the mental strain is just unbearable. Its like having a vessel bursting migraine on every part of your head and upper spine. I groan again closing my eyes while holding my head in my hands to keep it from falling. Estergon pukes loudly, he is too young to have tried to look at that thing I think before I pass out.

*

Michael

It's beautiful, the storm is beautiful and sentient, if feels almost like a child yet the dept of its age is unfathomable. An entity that is led by the forces I can only compare to emotions or instincts. Reminding me of the philosophy of 'I feel, therefore I am', instead of the sapient, 'I think, therefore I am', philosophy.

Chakra itself isn't dependent on ether, they are almost parallel to each other on most things, but I needed ether in my body in order to not be blown apart by the opening of my crown chakra. I know so much now, humanity is so much closer to a hive minded species than they even realise. The need for social interaction, the need for emotional interaction, the need for intimacy and the danger in loneliness.

Loneliness an outcome of a clogged crown chakra more than it is about being alone. You can be lonely in a crowd of people that know you intimately if your crown chakra is badly enough blocked, preventing that spiritual connection that a part of us all crave, fellowship. There is a 'cloud' of human ideas, thoughts, innovations, fears, hopes, that we all tap into a little.

The invention of zero as a numerical placeholder by the Babylonians adopting the Sumerian counting system. Half a world away in Mesoameric the Maya independently came up with the same idea. The spear invented throughout the Earth several times independently by different peoples. The clock for time keeping, explosives, the discovery of micro organisms. All seemingly independently authentically original ideas, but one idea propagates another, even one thousands of miles away many years later.

For we are all connected, everything that is, was, everything that was shall be again. The circular cycle of infinitely, a concept we have no hope of understanding yet we have a word for it, infinity.

The storm and all it encampuses strains me somehow as it begins filling a part of me, a usually insubstantial part of me, the part were my soul and spirit meet and rest. The storm starts to fill me somehow, and the more it crams itself in, the smaller I seem to become in my own body.

I have already died to the world I knew, I have already lost everyone I have ever cared about, and I have already been on the adventure of a lifetime even if briefly. I have seen wonders and lived a dream, I have left children and a legacy, what more could I ask for in my small almost insignificant life?

And so I let the Storm in, I let it in because I don't mind dying, I let it in even as it seems to be outgrowing and displacing my very soul, I let it in because it is driven by intentions/emotion more than any nefarious thoughs or plans. It's a universal storm, a part of nature that though destructive, is necessary for new growth. I let it in because I know it, we've seen each other before when I traveled here and it let me gaze at it, learning new truths about storms in outer space, storms in the substance between space, storms!

Has there ever been such destructive beauty, such proof of the existence of God. Even God spoke to Job through the storm didn't he? Did he not show himself to his chosen people through a storm? The connection between the storm and the Earth, the balance, the origin of storms on Earth, the connection to the ocean, the seas, the lakes, the heat, the cold the sun and the moon. The connections to waves, to wind, to currents, to deserts, to plants, the balance.

I find that I'm about to burst somehow, yet simultaneously be squashed and compressed to a tiny dense thing. I let go of whatever was still clenching within me as pain like I have never imagined seems to shred me. I scream in an agony that is soul deep as parts of my soul are changed, I scream and wish for death as pieces of Storm permeate my soul like shrapnel.

I am destroyed in places and a clean canvas is left behind, my spirit is chaos, my body... I don't know what is happening to my body if anything but the pain is unbearable. So I try not to bear it, I try to flee but I can't flee myself, I'm sure I've gone utter mad as time loses it's meaning to me as I know nothing but pain, pain the body has no way of interpreting such pain.

I don't know how long it all is, but this thing eventually stops pouring into me for some reason. I don't know whether it is completely in me or has only pit a part of itself in me, I don't know if I have survived with my mind intact or not, I don't know whether I want to have survived. But it gets quiet within me a moment, but something bellows within me a moment later as though in the wind.

I open my eyes and look around me, the pain subsiding as though a phantom pain slowly dissipating. Not much has changed in the carven, only the walls are completely smooth and darker, but not even the cots beside me have moved even an inch.

I stand slowly clicking my joints and trying not to groan out loud. I look around, I'm alone in the carven. I sigh, walk to the now smooth stone bowl for a few sips of water. It tastes divine, I walk to the entrance slowly touching the wall the whole time, I can't believe I survived that. I find a scruffy Jonah standing over an unconscious Estergon, Rumeria and Mirabilis.

"Are you still you?" Jonah asks in a gruff voice looking me over. I think about that for a moment.

"I'm not sure." I say, wondering if I'm still myself.