Interlude: Attaboy

There were too many dreams.

Dreams about people long dead. Parents, teachers, friends, enemies.

A sister.

Dreams about fighting. Dreams about loving. Dreams in which he was doing things he couldn’t begin to understand.

It was too much. He had finally forbidden Dijiann from showing him any more memories.

He was almost glad now that Right Hand hadn’t accepted Atticus as his name. Being Atticus reborn was fine in theory, but he also wanted to keep being Attaboy. There was so much more Atticus, so many years of memories, that he felt like he could be washed away at any moment.

It wasn’t just the dreams that caused Attaboy’s head to hurt, and gut to burn either. Now, Doctor Quimea was frustrated with their sessions. Dijiann helped Attaboy make everything about the system as confusing as possible for the Doctor. Sometimes he gave Attaboy random strings of letters and numbers to tell him. Or fake messages, like, “Authority exceeded, please supply administration level password.”

It had worked for a while, but Doctor Quimea was becoming more pointed in his questioning. Attaboy was afraid that he suspected something. He was afraid the Doctor would just give up and cut his head open.

The best thing in Attaboy’s life was no longer the sword training. That was just another frustrating exercise in pretending to be something he was not.

No. The best thing in life was anime.

Dijiann had helped Attaboy to contact something called the ‘Internet Archive' channel. While most of it was endless, boring text, there was also a whole world of amazing anime cartoons to watch. Some of them had been in Atticus’ memory-dreams as well. Every chance Attaboy got, he sat by the window of his room and immersed himself in worlds where the heroes were young, like him. They had powers, they had strength. They had determination.

He wanted to be like them.

Believe it.

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Chapter 31: Narrative

After a night of her own training, Lilijoy was up before dawn standing with Rosemallow and Jessila by the obstacle course.

The term ‘obstacle’ didn’t really do the course justice, except for the easier sections designed for the least advanced students. Now that she thought about it, the term ‘course’ wasn’t adequate either. The sprawling area was more of a complex, with hundreds of progressively difficult impediments.

There were the expected pits, walls and rope courses at the beginning, but as the course progressed its contents grew and mutated into intimidating edifices of peril. By the end of the course, some of the obstacles were downright horrifying, with the kinds of active traps and dangers found in the most treacherous dungeons.

She supposed it made sense. What kind of training would it be if the students weren’t prepared for the types of dangers they might find? Still, even Rosemallow had yet to encourage Lilijoy or Jess to go past the midway point.

“There’s suffering and dying that teaches you something, and then there’s just plain stupid dying.” Her trainer had said when they first approached the course the previous week. “I suppose you’d learn something from it eventually, so feel free to try on your own time.”

Neither Lilijoy nor Jessila had yet been so inspired. One look at the giant spinning saws, revolving spiked tunnels and fiery pits found toward the end of the course was enough. They would stick to non-lethal tests of their agility.

At the moment, Rosemallow was talking, and Lilijoy wasn’t paying attention. Instead she was thinking about forming a learning cohort with Skria and Jess and herself, and maybe Magpie too, to guide the under-leveled crafters through some of the easier scenarios and dungeons. Skria and Jess had been excited by the idea, especially since their last experience term had been so dismal. Magpie, as usual, was nowhere to be found, though Lilijoy was confident she would see her at their regular planning time in the mystic library.

“...tournament...” intruded on her awareness briefly, and she turned her ears to Rosemallow. “...unranked for the fourth cohort, I have entered both of you in the preliminaries, which start on fourth-day of the second week of experience term. You will both be capped at level ten until the following class term. Understood?”

Lilijoy nodded, planning to review her sense recording later in case she had missed something vital. She felt pretty lukewarm about the whole tournament thing anyway. They seemed more like a chance for the clan kids to show off and raise their profiles. Since that was pretty much the opposite of what she wanted, she decided to ask her teacher if she could just skip them.

“After the tournament, I expect both of you will be raised to the Third Cohort. This means that you, Jessila, will need to gain sufficient experience points to reach level eleven over experience term.”

She turned her third eye to Lilijoy and sighed. “You, on the other hand, need to focus on combat skills. Your damage output is too low to do more than annoy an opponent with decent Invulnerability. Against someone like Jessila in real combat, you would be completely helpless without a high-quality weapon. Any questions? Save them for later.”

She clapped her hands together. “Jessila, catch Lily without harming her. Lily…” She stopped for a moment and drew a four-foot diameter circle on the ground with her foot. “Resist with all means at your disposal, other than Charm, without leaving this circle. Begin!”

Lilijoy did have many questions, but she had learned not to test Rosemallow’s patience. Plus, Jessila was eyeing her while stretching her shoulders.

Yeah, this is going to be a rough one.

***

An hour later, Lilijoy finally got to ask Rosemallow some questions while Jessila worked the obstacle course.

“Master, I was wondering if I could raise my crafting skill?”

Rosemallow stared down at her. Without looking up, she whipped a stone across her body, hitting Jessila just as she was leaping for a dangling rope. Bending to gather a new missile from the small pile at her feet, she grunted.

“Why?”

There was a crash and a muffled groan as Jessila missed the rope and fell behind the edge of the ramp from which she had leapt. “Dodge faster!” Rosemallow yelled over her shoulder as she watched for a reply from Lilijoy.

“Um…” For some reason, Lilijoy had failed to anticipate the rather obvious question. Because it would be cool, probably wouldn’t get very far.

“Um… because I figured out Qi imbued strikes today?”

This was true, as far as it went. Unlike a Qi strike, which projected energy out of her hand or foot, a Qi imbued strike was limited to physical contact; it simply added to the force of a normal blow. Unfortunately, she had the same problem with juggling her Qi and Power that she did with Flash, so she wasn’t able to stack the damage bonuses.

“You mean like everyone else who has studied Unarmed Combat for more than a couple weeks? Do it while you’re in Flash, and then I’ll be mildly less unimpressed.”

Using her Qi and Flash at the same time was still problematic. She had hoped that her new mental speed would allow her to crack the problem, but so far, the morning’s training had been disappointing in that regard. It was one more sign that the speed of her thoughts and a huge repository of knowledge were no substitute for experience.

The problem was still that Flash mana interfered with her ability to draw and focus the Qi mana within her body. She had even considered enlisting Jiannu’s help to run the Qi while she did the Flash but decided it would probably be better to figure it out properly. Besides, she could remember doing a ton of great cultivating over the last few hours and didn’t want to interrupt.

Rosemallow returned her attention to throwing more stones at Jessila. It almost seemed unfair to Lilijoy. In order for the stones to have any impact against Jessila’s extraordinary toughness, Rosemallow had to throw them at velocities which made dodging nearly impossible.

Lilijoy tried again. “Because I could weave magic weapons and armor?”

Rosemallow juggled the stone she was about to throw, before casting a skeptical glance. “Such as…”

Here, Lilijoy was prepared. She had devoted quite a bit of thought to the combat applications of magical hand weaving. “A sling, or a whip. Or what about woven chain mail? There’s no reason I couldn’t use metal wires to weave.”

“And do you know how to weave something like that?” Another stone whistled through the air.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Well… I can learn?”

“Let me know when you have. Better yet, bring me a proof of concept, and then we’ll talk.”

She turned away, then smacked herself on the head. “But good thing you mentioned slings. I’ve got a friend coming by later. He’ll show you the ropes. Ha!”

Rosemallow punning was never a good sign. “Where should I meet him?”

A large hand was waved. “How should I know? It’ll all work out.” Rosemallow considered for a moment and then relented. “Just come out here after lunch.”

“And Master, about the tournament...”

“Exciting eh? Nothing like a little single combat to get the blood pumping!”

“Um. Sure? But also, can I not do it?”

A look of utter incomprehension began to cross Rosemallow’s face, so Lilijoy hurried to explain.

“I’m trying to keep my abilities secret for now, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Imagine how surprised everyone will be when I finally do one!”

Lilijoy had no particular intention of ever doing one if she could keep coming up with excuses, but she figured Rosemallow would be more agreeable if she sounded excited.

The look of incomprehension changed to suspicion.

“Is this about the levels, kid?”

“No, I promise.”

“Aw, I was really looking forward to seeing you kick some clan butt.” Rosemallow kicked at the ground. “Fine. Not everyone's cup of tea anyway.”

Well that was easy?

“Yes, Master. Also...”

Rosemallow preempted her. “No, there’s no point in raising your Acrobatics until you have raised your Power. Wait until it’s twenty points or so. Now go shred some practice dummies with Qi strikes; you need to work on extending your range if you want them to work right.”

Over the past week of training, Lilijoy had been able to get her Qi strikes to extend half a foot from her fist. According to Rosemallow, this was virtually useless.

“Losing the strength damage bonus for six inches of range isn’t a good trade-off. Besides, the real advantage is that pure Qi damage is not affected by Invulnerability. But you have to get it past their armor for it to do you any good,” she had explained. “In a fight against a large opponent, the knock-back will be minimal, at least until you hit Expert. What you really need is the ability to keep a little distance so you can make use of your mobility and compensate for your tiny reach.”

These words running through her head, Lilijoy made her way to the row of wooden dummies at the side of the obstacle course. Her goal was to raise her range to a foot by the end of the week.

No problem, she thought. It’s only an inch a day. In fact, it would make more sense for her to work on using Qi and Flash at the same time. Once she could do that, her training could go even faster.

She moved into Flash, but barely, at the lowest level she could manage. With her brain in overdrive, she watched the flow of mana to her limbs. Maybe the problem was less that she didn’t understand Qi, and more that she didn’t understand Flash?

Sure, she had gotten good at using it, but her understanding lagged far behind her intuition. She turned off Flash, and watched the mana recede, then turned it on again. It wasn’t instantaneous, though it was close. With her mind processing about ten times faster than normal, she could watch the energy spread from her core to her toes and fingertips over less than a tenth of a second.

I wonder if I can slow it down?

Her first attempts to slow it down failed. The Flash mana was slippery and light; it was a bit like trying to slow the wind. She focused her attention on her core and tried to see just how the Flash was escaping. It was leaving her core somehow, and held in by something when not in use, so what exactly was changing when she activated it? Or what changed as she used more or less of it? After all, her core wasn’t a solid container, like a bottle or something, so what kept the energy in?

One of the neat things she had noticed about the Inside was the way details worked, emerging more clearly as she focused. With sufficient attention, she could even catch the process at work as the particulars were created and rendered. She was pretty sure that the speed at which that occurred was calibrated to normal human perception, because now that hers was much faster she could catch the Inside in the act of creation.

A bit of experimentation found that an area’s details stayed constant after they were determined, rendering to her senses almost instantantly even after several days. She couldn’t say for sure it was permanent, but it seemed likely. It seemed like a parallel to the Reality Bender achievement; when the Inside needed to develop new rules or details, it did so on the fly, and those details became a permanent fixture of the world.

With this in mind, she looked closely at the swirling energy of her core. It reminded her very much of the vortex in her soul space. She guessed that the spinning was created by equal amounts of attraction and repulsion. Or maybe there was momentum involved, like in the solar system.

Just how did her mind connect to the core to pull energy out of it?

Maybe she was overthinking things. The Inside was a simulated reality after all; there didn’t need to be a physics-based answer for every mechanic. Though she had noted that Guardian had included as much physics modeling as possible, at least in this part of the Inside. She guessed that it was just more efficient to derive consequences of actions by logical rules.

What set the Inside apart was that one could connect thoughts to events without the need for a physical explanation. But it didn’t mean there weren’t rules governing the interaction. Guardian must have some way to measure the intensity, the specificity of thought for all of the magical aspects of the Inside. What she needed to do was figure out how to get her system to provide exactly the correct output for whatever information Guardian was gathering.

Clearly it didn’t relate to speed of processing, or she would have become massively more effective at mana manipulation. That left some kind of measure of intensity of thought. But she doubted it was enough to just think harder. The real question was what to think, and the clarity, the specificity of the thought.

 Specificity.

That was the answer. She had been trying to perform a task without any clarity as to what she was doing, which was certainly understandable. After all, wasn’t that the learning process? Flailing around, trying to connect what you were doing to loosely defined goals, until you knew enough to refine the goals and make the flailing more efficient. A master of a subject understood what they were trying to do at least as well as the means to do it.

Now that she thought it through, it was clear that she needed to define what she wanted to do internally, rather than externally. If she got the internal state correct, the rest would follow.

So how could she imagine something she hadn’t experienced? She realized that emotions played a powerful role in defining the process. If she was uncertain, insecure or afraid of failure, even at an unconscious level, there would be a negative feedback loop sabotaging her thought process, limiting her imagination. The self-reinforcing walls of narrative that defined the self also contained and limited her ability to imagine actions and abilities that were not currently a part of her identity.

She thought of Mr. Sennit. He had probably dreamed of making lots of gold his entire life, but he couldn’t do it until he was acted upon by an outside force, her in this case. He could imagine in a general way, fantasizing, but specific thoughts, the kind that led to actions, threatened his self-narrative and were avoided, probably before they even reached his awareness.

True power is the ability to change your self-narrative. But surely it couldn’t be that simple?

Then she thought of the raw, primal terror of loss of identity she had experienced in her soul space. That was the power of the self-narrative, stronger than transitory thoughts and goals, rooted in the bedrock of how consciousness worked, wired down to the sense of self-preservation inherent in all life. Yes, it was that simple, but identity was a highly resilient system of feedback loops reinforcing each other. Push it off course, and it would find its way back to the center. Its guardians were emotions.

Words floated into her awareness.

 A story told to a story

Heard by the story telling it

 Forms a castle of itself

And its emergent inevitables

Disgust the very stones of its defense

And the blade of its discernment

Bliss when the swirling stories feed it

Reinforce its walls with layers of recognition

 Rage when stories bite the truth of self

Threatening the walls of reinforcement

 Pain the recognition of holes that must be healed

Teacher and traitor, always the last to arrive

 We are

A boat made from water

A bird made from air

“I couldn’t help but notice what you were thinking about,” said Jiannu. “I felt inspired to poetry for some reason. Maybe it’s all the right-brain circuits.”

“It’s a lovely poem,” said Lilijoy. “If I may so myself.”

Jiannu laughed. “It just kind of popped out. It’s a bit clunky here and there, and I’m still working on the end though.”

“Not enough elements?”

“Something like that. Let me know if you think of anything for earth and fire.”

“I don’t know. I think anything else would be forcing it anyway.”

Jiannu thought for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. Anyway, I was thinking that we have something pretty amazing here. Leverage, I guess you could call it. We can be each other’s outside force.”

“You mean we can push off of each other to change faster.”

“Exactly! And we have the tools to disable unconscious emotional limitations. I can take away fear when it’s harmful, or disgust when needed.”

“Or even remove the positive reinforcement from harmful actions,” said Lilijoy.

“I’m almost sad we’re not addicted to something so that we could try it out.”

“But you can also make things that are good for me pleasurable.”

“It almost feels like cheating, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, except...”

“It’s more like everyone else should be able to do this,” Jiannu finished for her.

“Control their own emotions at a chemical level.”

“Except, take someone like Mo.”

They both shuddered.

“He reinforced the worst parts of himself. His narrative was in control of his system, so he removed everything that got in the way of his desires.”

“But he didn’t have you.”

“He didn’t have me,” Jiannu agreed.

After the conversation with Jiannu, Lilijoy returned to her task. It was much simpler, now that she knew she needed to find the correct internal visualization and imagine it extremely vividly, to put her whole heart into it. If she was incorrect, that was fine. She would simply try something else. Jiannu could help if necessary, removing the sting of failure, reinforcing the joy in the process, helping her vault the walls of self.

Indeed, her first attempt, where she tried to separate the Flash mana and Qi into different types of energy, failed utterly, even though she had specified every detail of how it would look and feel. Instead of feeling disappointed by the failure, she felt jubilant.

I’m narrowing it down.

She took another minute to meditate on the nature of the energy she was dealing with.

It’s light, fast and likes to move. Even in my core, it swirls. What keeps the core separate, what defines it, is not the material, but the motion.

She imagined the energy for the Qi strike as a tightly spiraling vortex, a continuation of the core motion but compressed to a high velocity as it flowed into her arm and out her hand.

This is it!

Doubt was impossible. She brought herself into Flash and struck out toward the training dummy. Her Qi energy blasted through the Flash permeating her body and exited her palm, knocking off chips of wood and rocking the dummy on its post. She did it again, and again, each time backing away just a little farther. The spiral allowed the Qi to maintain its force for a much greater distance, and by the time she had reached the edge of her new effective range, about four feet, the training dummy was a hunk of shredded wood canted at a thirty-degree angle away from her.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” roared Rosemallow from across the way. “That was at least ten Qi strikes in a few seconds.” Her voice sounded uncharacteristically excited. “We’ve got to train twice as hard now to get you to Journeyman!”

Now I’ve done it.