Sachihiro

Defeated by an aura of peace and gentleness. It still baffles me to think about it but the snake, and I were defeated by an aura of peace and gentleness. I think to myself whilst sitting up watching the priestly man work at healing my wounds using an amalgamation of aura, spirit-energy and slight traces of mana.

‘’Your path is very peculiar, tell me, are you a Warrior Awakened King?’’ The man asks, weaving his hand over my wounds knitting my hurt.

What can he tell of my path from what he is doing? My spiritual shield is down, giving anyone that has the ability to asses me free reign to do so but its only an instance that my paranoia flairs before I realise I really don’t mind talking to this man openly.

‘’No, Awakened Lord tier still. I just have a wide initial base of Awakening, kind of a long story.’’

‘’We have time,’’ he says our eyes connecting before he goes back to piecing me back together with intricate weaving of energy under his waving hands.

I consider him as he works on me, tracing some of the invisible intricate patterns he is weaving with Spirit Sense before they fade evaporating out of existence. His aura is pure, his stance none threatening, his demeanour at ease in a way that I intuitively find myself reciprocating. If this guy has ill intentions he’s good, real good at whatever scheme he is cooking up to have gotten under my defences especially with the state I was in when he found me.

‘’I am Sachihiro van Damage, from a people known as Barbarians in a land known as Sandoria. May I know who you are?’’

He smiles with his face eyes and aura looking up at me, it’s so surprising to feel his amused joy that I ease my browse finding that I had uplifted them from the genuine burst of aura.

‘’Who I am currently is a long road we actually don’t have the time to fully delve into, but my name is Παύλος(Paulos).’’

The word invades my mind as he speaks it, flowing through my mental defences like water through a sieve pleasantly washing into me as though spoken in both Universal and whatever language it is he just spoke it in at the same time. Again I bring back my upraised brows, Pherastasia and Anastasia would be so pissed at me for being so easy to read.

‘’Paulos,’’ I say tasting the word on my lips.

He nods.

I nod, then I start telling him about my base Awakening philosophy.

Don't dictate to the world what you want to be, let everything you can be be nourished.

We end up talking for quite some time going from topic to topic but mainly focused on Awakening as I am ever hungry for more perspectives on that. Even after all this time and where I currently am in life I hardly understand it at all, it’s such a broad vague thing, Awakening. He speaks mainly of sorcery, spirit energy, spirits and gods in general. It feels good, talking to someone like this. Someone that understands.

‘’Why shouldn’t we dream big, I bow to worship no one, not even the gods. I mean no disrespect don’t get me wrong,’’ I say making the warding sign of respect with my hand, chakra pulling mixing with spirit as I do. ‘’But I don’t like to be beholden to anyone, and what if some day the power I gain comes with constrains I’m not willing to yield to?’’ I ask the priest with a gesture.

‘’So what do you see for yourself really, what is it you want to be because you cannot be everything.’’ He asks referring to the fact that my base Awakening is so broad that even to this day I’m still discovering things I didn’t know I could do.

‘’I once had a conversation with my master in which I was questioning the philosophy which we as her disciplines should view Awakening. I had already Awakened into my first tier and when high on awakening I had glimpsed paths that could eventually lead me to revel the gods themselves one day when Awakening Mana filled me,’’ I say seriously waiting for him to call me delusional. ‘’You know, those endless possibilities glimpsed during that first Mana Awakening?’’

He nods, urging me to continue.

‘’So I spoke to her and told her that though I greatly valued her wisdom and teaching I was hesitating to continue the path because I thought I had a new path of Awakening open for me with the way my foundational Awakening had taken place. I was sure of course that in another three to four thousand years I could be one of the most dangerous beings in the world, though I know realistically I won’t likely live a fraction that long.

‘’She was quiet a moment and asked me what I knew of the gods. I told her everything I knew, which is what everyone knows, the basics as they are,’’ I say waving my hand in a gesture conveying ‘no importance’.

‘’Then she asked if I really wanted to be one of the gods; I don’t of course but it was her next question that struck a chord within me. ‘Why use the gods as a measure of your success if you do not seek to be one of them,’ simple question I couldn’t find an answer to.’’

‘’You assumed that godhood means ultimate power,’’ Paulos says nodding. ‘’This is an understandable conclusion to have come to.’’

‘’Exactly, I had assumed that revelling the gods was the ultimate goal. Well not exactly always, as a child I wanted to be like my ma and da, a strange combination if I say so myself.’’ I grin at the thought of how different those two are.

‘’Then I wanted to be like Borr and his Chosen in our legends, a power I had a vague awareness of but didn’t really understand beyond the stories told. Then as time and experience blossomed I wanted to be an Awakened Lord like my friend Asriel, then an unravelled swordsman then an all round complete warrior, then a father of a nation with the power to back that up if a threat presents itself you get the gist?’’

‘’You do not know what you want,’’ he says with an upraised wrinkling brow. His hands busy moulding the intricate spell into the working, the patterns are artfully being woven about in beautiful ghostly tendrils of gold.

‘’No not that, what I want changes with time, or at least I want too much.’’ I say throwing up my hands. ‘’How could I direct my own Awakenings if I don’t consistently know which direction I want to take? The main reason my master’s way of letting the 'Universe' direct my Awakening resonated with me so, I didn’t want to limit myself to any one idea.’’

‘’Yet when you let the Manna course through you uncontrolled you do not gain as much as you would had you directed it. It doesn’t have to be in any single direction but even generalising will have more beneficial results that just closing your eyes and hoping for the best.’’

‘’Maybe, seems to have worked out well for me so far though," I say with a grin genuinely happy with my overall growth as a person.

‘’And you say Wisdom has abandoned you?’’

‘’I have come to know that these spirits in all their guises are full of deceit and unreliable.’’

[Mhmmm...] he rubs his chin looking at his work, the most beautiful piece of artwork I have ever seen created. All my senses excited from the sensation I’ve been experiencing witnessing the working, sparkling in various tones and hues tingling as though against my skin directly. To breathe is to scent it, swallow taste it, gaze be struck in awe as though witnessing Rigel rising.

‘’Your problem is that wisdom has abandoned you.’’ He says looking up at me then back at his work to start weaving the invisible energies tickling my Spirit Awareness into the three metal ingot I gave him to look at after he’d finished healing me.

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‘’I never really relied–‘’

‘’I do not mean the spirit to which you have debased yourself,’’ he pauses turning his head as though listening for something whilst still caressing invisible air over the working.

‘’Tell me, what do you consider a god?’’

I think about that for a moment, I know a lot more now than just myths and legends. I have an inkling of what some of these entities actually are that come to our world and proclaim themselves to be gods. Some of the things they can do are completely out of this world, but are they really gods? Are they existences I can compare to Gaia, the world and goddess from which I was made, or are they just different creatures all together and so cannot be compared.

These new deities coming into the world certainly aren’t my god, but do they stop being god’s just because they aren’t mine?

‘’I don’t know, anything that is powerful enough to enforce such a claim I guess, worshiped and venerated as such by others.’’

He smiles at me light shining out of his face suffusing me with peace, ‘’and what is your god Sachihiro?’’

Something in the question stumps me so I don’t immediately refute any and all forms of piety. ‘‘I may have gods I honour but I prostrate myself before none, and never after what I’ve been through. ‘’

‘’It’s rare to meet one so young that openly thinks so highly of himself,’’ he says wiping what looks like dew on the now quiet, smooth metal surface. ‘’So you don’t consider any of the known gods worthy of you?’’

[Pff] I snort.

‘’I don’t even understand those creatures, nor do I desire to for that matter. I don’t want to be beholden to anyone or anything, my independence is important to me, the ties forged through consorting with these beings are not simple.‘’ I shake my head vigorously just thinking about the gease currently on me. ‘’No, I want nothing to do with anything calling itself a god.’’

‘’I see, well, I hope you find that which it is you seek. There, all done,’’ he says with a big grin stepping away from the ingots.

I hesitate to touch them but reach out my hand caressing it over the stone looking cubes of metal. I can almost hear something whispering fortitude, vitality, strength into me.

I snap my hand away my heart racing at the experience, at the gift this man has given to me. Why?

‘’Old man what is it you want from me?’’ I ask instinctual fear worming out of my chest as how deeply in his power this man has had me this whole time.

‘’Why have I been telling you my thoughts so freely, who are you?’’ I ask again taking another step back, a healthy step back.

‘’I am the One Who Seeks,’’ he says with both deep joy, deep yearning and weariness creating a beautiful tapestry of his aura that makes me want to hug him and weep.

‘’What is it that you seek?’’ I get out, completely unsettle by the fact that even now I don’t feel the urge to reach for Honour.

‘’I seek God,’’ he says, a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes as though he were declaring the happiest news ever. Have I found myself in the company of a madman?

‘’There are many gods,’’ I say unsettled and yet captivated. An urgency coming over me from within myself, this priest has been fucking with my emotions big time and I didn’t even feel it happening, I don’t even mind even now really. A fact which unsettles me the most. When he asked to see the ingots why did I give three of them to him so freely, how did he even see into my rings?

My heel scuffles against a stalagmite arresting my movement startling a knife into my hand. When last didn’t I pay attention to my surrounding to the extent of tripping on something?

‘’I seek the truth.’’

‘’What truth specifically are you looking for?’’ I say calming myself down, Spirit Aura burning around me reassuringly as I go back to the ingots, slightly embarrassed.

‘’I seek the origin of all things.’’

‘’You seek the Seven?’’

‘’That which the Seven came to be.’’

‘’So you seek the god that made the gods?’’

‘’I seek the God that made all things,’’ the idea itself is absurd.

‘’Then what? What will finding this god do for you?’’

‘’So far seeking has been a reward in itself,’’ he says easily gesturing to the three ingots between us.

Moving forward I take them one at a time, assessing them slowly carefully, feeling their favour of vitality, fortitude, strength seep into me. I take a fresh breath, what has this man done to these ingots? Fortitude, the metal itself feeling stronger without anything having had changed in its structure at all. There is now no visible trace of the intricate enchantments I witnessed being woven into the metal ingots but I can feel it, somehow.

‘’What did you do to these?’’ So many questions whorl within me as I feel what I feel holding the ingots gifted to me by Master Zaraya.

‘’Uru is a very special metal for enchanting, even in its base form it can take enchantments quite well compared to many other minerals.’’

‘’But I don’t feel the mana pull, I can’t feel anything coming from me and this can’t have an energy source of its own its just a lump of metal.’’ I say tapping the ingot on Honour’s tsuka over my shoulder, Vibrational Sense. I study the vibration in the metal as it rings dully, yep; the metal itself hasn’t changed at all.

‘’Everything has energy, but no this type of enchantment doesn’t feed off mana, this is Blessing.’’

‘’Blessing?’’

‘’Blessing.’’

If ever I owed someone something it is this man almost wearily standing a ways away so as not to make me uncomfortable. I feel shame, shame at the reaction I had that has had him weary in my presence.

‘’I thank you for this blessing,’’ I say with a bow to him sheathing my knife.

He nods in acknowledgment but doesn’t move otherwise. Ahh fuck, now he’s skittish which doesn’t even make sense since he could probably aura blast me knocking me out or something.

‘’What can I do for you in turn?’’

‘’A gift isn’t a gift if it is paid for,’’ he says dusting himself clearly preparing to leave.

‘’Please, it would shame me not to provide some aid or service to you,’’ I say disappearing the ingots back into storage. He looks at me blankly for a moment, then a smile creasses his face again.

‘’You know, I don’t remember the last time I had a meal.’’

We sit quietly with the fire between us eating the last of my boar meat. Feels like ages ago that the others brought down that beast, I wonder how everyone is doing.

‘’It’s very good,’’ he says taking another juicy bite and chewing whilst nodding his head.

‘’Yes, its very good.’’ I take another bite of the juicy meat wrapped in the last remains of my razor leaf, I’m gonna have to start looking for food sources that aren’t meat.

‘’So tell me, what is it that you actually seek?’’

The question is deeply personal in a lot of ways but I find that I don’t feel compelled to divert or lie, there is just something honest about this man that has infected me. It’s liberating.

‘’I met a spirit some time back, the thing calls itself Phosphorus.’’

I tell him about my translocation, my eventual meeting with the Acolyte and its god. I tell him about the visions I saw and the things I experienced, I tell what I did to get out of there unpossessed and the quest I now find myself on.

‘’So you see, I could never follow any god but instead, I want freedom from the spiritual ties I’ve already gotten myself into through ignorance.’’

‘’Interesting story, truly you are one leading a fascinating life.’’ He says leaning back waving his feet over the flames now that I’ve stopped with my telling, I sigh leaning back as well, full.

‘’Interesting is a good enough euphemism for what I’ve been through I guess, I just hope the kids are okay.’’

‘’Let me ask you, what do you think it is that brings these new gods and powerful beings to this world in such numbers?’’

I think about it a moment, from what I know, what I’ve seen, what I insinuate. ‘’Opportunity most likely, there are things here that they find valuable.’’

He nods, ‘’and one of those is your faith.’’

I ponder that, assessing with what I already know about spirits.

‘’Look at yourself, you yourself alone have ambitions so high for yourself that you compare your eventual growth to these new gods' power. Imagine how much potential would be harnessed if a deity had a hundred followers like you, a thousand. All forming their spirituality into faith magic feeding these gods, its an investment by the pious for sure,’’ he adds with a pout.

‘’But to worship something as your god is to put yourself in a subordinate position to it, otherwise what’s the point of having a god? What I’m saying is you will never surpass or outgrow your god but your god will give you strength, shape your faith, shape your spirit so its strong since that is also within its best interest. Strong believers provide stronger faith, its a reciprocal cycle of growth.’’

‘’My spirit is already strong,’’ I say scrunching my nose at the very idea of needing some god to help shape me.

‘’Your spirit is big, but it is not strong enough for the things you are contending with. Not even close,’’ he takes a breath with eyes closed then gazes into my own.

‘’Your spiritual energy though raw is one of the brightest thickest I have ever come across outside the established cults and religions. I initially thought you a paladin of some deity when I saw you fighting frosty there, but when you used no faith magic and seemed about to die I thought I should step in.

‘’Had you a god to hide behind, a god to uplift you, to cleanse you from all these other spiritual obligations you find yourself with there would be no need for whatever quest you find yourself on. Your abandant spiritual energy would be easily directed by faith magic into amazing power.’’

‘’And this is your god which you cannot even name?’’ I ask completely done with all things spirit yet eager to learn from this man’s point of view.

‘’The god I seek is greater than I am and will always be greater than I am no matter how great I become. What I seek is greater than all things because it’s through it that all things came into being, even the things now calling themselves gods had creators. Have counterparts that compete with them or enemies they contest against, have obstacles that pose a threat to them or their plans.’’

He shakes his head almost sadly, ‘’these are false gods whose power we could one day attain for ourselves if things aligned for us in such a way. I seek what will always be greater than all things, a god worthy of me, and yes this being has no name that could encapsulate it so I call it God.’’

‘’And who is it that created this god through whom you say all things have been created?’’

‘’The question you ask shows a lack of understanding in what I seek. If after everything, I find that the god through whom all things have come into being was also created, then my search is yet to be complete.’’

...

...

I guess I can't argue with that. ‘’How’s the search going?’’

[Hahahaha], his laugh is spontaneous and rich tinkling the heavy ambiance infecting me with its mirth such that I find a wide grin on my own face.