An uncomfortable feeling surrounded Lya when the man looked at her. She looked to the right to see Brella noticing the Cultivator’s interest in Lya. She didn’t know if she imagined it or not, but it almost seemed like Brella was annoyed at that development.
“You,” the Cultivator said, suddenly next to her. “How did this happen?”
“…This?” Lya asked.
“This,” he said, motioning to her whole person, “how did you carve out your Soul-Space like this… without dying?”
“I… don’t know. It just sort of happened…” Lya said, answering automatically. He was a Cultivator, it never even crossed her mind to try and hide the truth from him.
“Curious. Very curious indeed…”
The man’s eyes clouded over in thought, and as instantaneously as he did almost everything, he also made a decision.
“Too bad I don’t have the time right now to see where this will go… but. Do you know how to read?”
“Y-yes! Of course!” Lya replied, not completely a lie, but also not completely a truth either.
“Good,” he nodded, “then take this,” he took out a copper ring, looked at it intently for a moment as his eyes once again glazed over, and handed it to her.
Lya took the unexpected gift, and looked it over.
“It is an inter-spacial ring, I’ve put a couple of resources in there for you. But start with this,” he said, handing her a slim manual that he took out of thin air.
Lya looked at the writing on the side of the manual, but couldn’t immediately decipher the calligraphic speech. Noticing her difficulty, the Cultivator rolled his eyes and touched her elbow. She felt a cold energy enter the same elbow with the paper-thin Soul-Ward membrane and flinched aside, almost dropping the manual.
“The Basic Principles of the Soul-Ward,” he said motioning to the book. “Start with that. I’ve just put a patch on your leak, but if you don’t get that under control soon. You will die. You have a month… at most.”
Lya wanted to ask him about what he’d just said, but the man had already turned around when Garmin showed up with all the packages he’d ordered. He took them from her and again, they disappeared into thin air.
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Brella didn’t have the same compunction of asking, and approached the man to ask, “What about me? I’ve managed to make some Soul-Space.”
The man turned to address her with disdain, “Yes, a mediocre one at best. Just stay still when the other Sect members show up to pick up the Spirit Leaves you can go with them.” Then he addressed Lya again, “As for you… if you survive, tell them to take you in. I left a seal of recommendation for you inside the ring… put the ring on now.”
Lya noticed she was still holding it, and numbly slid it onto her finger. It didn’t immediately fit, but shrunk down to size in an instant.
“Good,” the man said with a nod, “now it's bonded to you. So even if you do die, your little friend here can’t take things not rightfully hers.”
Lya choked in surprise at the statement that suddenly painted her friend in such a negative light. She would never have even thought Brella capable of something like that.
“I’ll be back in a year or so. Hopefully you survive, Child. You could be quite an interesting case study…”
Having no response to that statement, Lya merely nodded and watched the man walk out the room without any further interaction. Just like that he was gone, and the whole room got riled up. There were many discussions about what the ring and the man’s statements could all mean, conspiracy theories and people throwing questions her way, wanting to study the ring on her hand and the manual she still held.
So many different questions thrown her way, and she was unable to answer any. Lya felt like she was walking through a fog, but when Brella tried to take her manual from her she snapped back into the present and took it back. There was a moment of awkward silence before she could bring herself to say, “I’m quite tired. I think I am going to my room…” she looked at the other people, “I’ll let you guys know if I find anything useful… and I’ll let you borrow it after I read it Brell…”
She escaped before they could hold her for more questions.
In her room, she locked the door and immediately tried to open the ring. She thought it would take her some figuring out, since the man hadn’t given any instructions, but as soon as she directed her attention to it, it was like a world inside the ring opened up for her. There wasn’t as much as she hoped in it, but more than she expected.
Two vials full of labeled Foundation Pills and eight other manuals. She wanted to spend time decoding them, but since she only had a month and no idea where to go from there, she took out the manual the man had handed to her. Seeing as it was the only one he gave her in person, she figured its where she was meant to start.
Lya sat down and lit one of the precious three candles she had saved from her meager earnings. It was an unnecessary luxury, but time was something she had apparently very little of.
She opened the book to the first page and started reading. Very quickly she came to two realizations.
1. She didn’t know how to read as well as she thought.
2. All the theorizing she’d done until then about Soul-Realms and Soul-Wards with other gatherers, while not completely wrong, was also completely off the mark.
Feeling the cold burn on her elbow where the Cultivator’s energy patch only served as a reminder that she should hurry up.
A month, she had a month to figure out why she was about to die and see if she could do something about it.