Jay opened his eyes. Smoke completely filled the room. Even Agatha, who sat directly in front of him, appeared hazy behind a raging whirlpool of smoke. She was staring in disbelief at his arms. Jay followed her eyes and looked down. The smoke was pouring into the black channels she painted, forming flowing rapids above the black lines like the carvings at each door.
At least, they did by his shoulder. As the smoky rivers rushed down Jay’s biceps, their flows gradually grew weaker and weaker. When they neared his elbows, there was barely a dribble flowing along the path set out for them. After they crossed onto his forearms, nothing stuck. The smoke slid off and rejoined the clouds spinning around the room.
Agatha regained her composure and began another chant. She spoke her first words softly, causing eddies to form in the air around her face. Wincing slightly, she kept chanting. Eventually, more established currents emerged and the smoke flowed in a winding, three-dimensional river orbiting her body. Her chant shifted lower. The river floated higher, until it almost touched the ceiling. She stopped chanting. The floating rivers momentum kept it moving for a few seconds before order vanished and it spread out across the room. Agatha picked up Jay's jacket and gestured for him to follow her out of the room.
What the hell is going on?
Once outside they walked in silence until they reached the door leading into the entry room. Agatha opened the door and Jay passed through in front of her. Akira's restless eyes popped up as Jay entered the room, even Lyra looked at him in anticipation.
“There is nothing I can do for him.” Agatha said. “I have not seen anyone’s essence channels damaged to this extent before. I shall ask to see a High Matron, perhaps they may know how to deal with the issue. In the meantime, please wait for me here. In silence. I do not expect to be long.”
The witch didn’t elaborate. Immediately turning and leaving the room.
Jay wanted to tell them everything, but a stiff glare from Lyra shot that idea down. Akira looked like he was bursting at the seams with boredom, it probably wasn’t the first conversation she’d stifled. Luckily, Agatha was true to her word and didn’t take long. She half-opened one of the doors after less than a minute and waved the trio in.
Lyra and Jay remained stone faced on their journey, one out of familiarity, one out of fear. Akira had enough curiosity for the three of them, however. He looked like a zoo animal that had just been set free, glancing at each chip on each stone, not staying on any one thing for more than a split second.
After an uneventful minute of walking, they stopped in front of a door with three strings of knucklebones draped across it. The group followed Agatha into a room much larger than the last one he entered, but furnished quite similarly. There were two cushions in the centre this time. On one of them sat a giant woman with almost identical tattoos to Agatha. Hers were even more faded, and the glimpses of skin that peeked through looked far more tanned and weathered.
The woman watched Jay with pure black eyes, she pointed a slender finger at the cushion directly opposite her.
“Sit.”
Her booming voice was already loud, but Jay had been sitting in near silence for the past twenty minutes. The command echoed around the room and lodged itself between his ears.
It didn’t feel like she’d commanded Jay, but he actively wanted to do whatever she said. Without any further thought, Jay sat and faced the witch. From this close, he finally noticed the scale of the woman. She towered at least two heads above Jay now that they were both seated.
The High Matron pointed her index finger up. All the residual smoke in the room swirled towards her, coalescing into a single grey droplet of at the tip of her finger. With her other hand, she grabbed Jay's half limp arm and held it up to her face. She sniffed, raised her eyebrows, and turned to look at Jay.
“How many fights have you had?”
“Two.”
“Impressive. Unfortunate.”
Jay wanted to ask what that meant but he stayed silent. Something about the woman’s presence stifled his curiosity. He was still curious, but he felt that whatever she was going to do next was more important.
The drop of smoke at her fingertip expanded into a football sized cloud. The high matron pointed her finger at Jay's right shoulder and the cloud followed. It felt like a gaseous ice bath rolling down his arm and spreading the icy cold, chipping off all the dried paint still remaining. She flicked her finger and the miniature cloud wiped off his left arm as well.
The High Matron spoke a single syllable and the whole room stood still. The miniature cloud separated into two, each half moving just above Jay's shoulders. The two hemispheres morphed and bulged, becoming more shapeless with each passing second. Eventually they burst, and the freed smoke crawled down Jay's arms again.
When Agatha commanded the smoke, guiding it down the channels on his arms, the smoke resembled a river neatly flowing between the embankments cut out by lines of conduit paint. Breaking up and reforming, but still following a sense of order.
This time it behaved differently.
It still flowed down his arms, but its path changed constantly. The vein of smoke perpetually shifting its form, erratically forging new pathways and abandoning old ones. Refusing to conform to one path.
Each time Jay blinked, the smoke moved.
Jay liked this smoke a lot more. He could have watched the weaving fumes cut patterns all day if he had the time.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Instead, his eyes wandered down to his forearms.
Like before, the flow weakened as the smoke neared his elbows. It maintained more strength than last time, but the darting stream didn’t make it to his forearms before diffusing back into the air.
The High Matron studied the flow for almost a minute before snapping her fingers. The smoke rushed back to her fingertips, forming a tiny droplet that rolled into her sleeve.
“Parts of your essence pathways have been completely annihilated. There is almost no trace that they even existed in your hands. Did you fight with lightning, or another type of electrical essence?”
Jay nodded.
“Did you use your nervous system as a way to harness its power?”
Jay nodded again.
“That explains the physical damage then. You pushed too hard in your last fight; you channelled too much essence through your pathways before they fully formed. Essence pathways are the connecting piece between your own personal essence, and the myriad essences of the world. They usually begin as part of your physical body, like your nerves, before propagating into a more conceptual form. You channelled too much power through your burgeoning pathways and your physical body paid the price. Not only have your early-stage pathways been obliterated. But the nerves in your lower arms are almost non-existent. An injury of this magnitude is within the ability of the coliseum to heal. I assume it denied you healing because you inflicted it upon yourself.”
That doesn’t sound too hopeful.
The words completely annihilated told Jay almost everything he needed to know. Lyra’s mortified face filled in the gaps.
It wasn’t matched by Akira, however. Jay saw the young man glaring daggers at the High Matron. Squinting his eyes into a calculating, yet spiteful, stare.
“The channels will regrow on their own. As will the nerves, provided you find a good enough healer.”
That doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps I was over worrying.
“After two months of rest your arms will have fully healed, but you won’t be able to use them at all for the next six weeks.”
I’m fucked.
“But you have a fight next week. I can reforge your essence pathways now, and they may be fully healed within the next seven days. I do not know of another way to heal them before your next fight.”
This sounded somewhat hopeful to Jay. Not good news, but far better than taking two months to recover. Jay glanced at his friends for affirmation, they both looked deep in thought.
Akira raised his hand slightly, eyes still trained on the High Matron.
“You may speak. I control the smoke here.”
“Finally!” he said, letting out a deep, exaggerated sigh. “How can you be so sure of Jay's situation? You’ve barely met him.”
“As I said, I control the smoke here. It has been observing him since he walked into the building. I harmonize with the essence of observation. When the smoke ran along his skin during my thorough analysis, it also permeated beneath. I saw no trace of an essence pathway in Jay's forearms.”
“But how can you be certain? Everyone’s pathways manifest differently.”
“This one thinks himself a philosopher. Yes, that is correct, but they all follow the same principles. They all stem from a point, whether that be physical or metaphorical, and propagate throughout the body according to their nature. When I observed Jay's pathways, I recreated them and let the smoke flow through the recreation accordingly. Past a certain point, they simply do not exist. Do you think I would have pathways tattooed on my body unless I understood their nature fully?”
Her last sentence cowed the room back to silence. A verbal spear towards Akira, the intruder challenging her authority.
But he didn’t back down.
“In that case, if you are aware of the channels’ individuality, why offer to redraw them for him? No matter how skilled you are, you cannot recreate Jay's personal essence. You’ll leave him spiritually crippled, with no choice but to study under you to achieve Harmony. Such a prescriptive interpretation of essence pathways isn’t conducive to long-term harmonization.”
The challenger fought back.
Jay saw where he was coming from, at least in the first part. Both Akira and the Storm Sage had stressed the importance of individuality on the path to Harmony. Relying so heavily on the High Matron for something like this seemed… off.
But all that philosophizing and foresight was useless if he didn’t make it past the next week. Jay didn’t just need to become a powerful fighter, he needed to survive the journey.
“You assume my intent boy. You would be wise not to do so again.” The High Matron’s deep voice shifted. Venom, previously masked behind power and wisdom, now bled through, spat at Akira through a derisive tone matched only by her words. “I offer a solution to a problem. Relying on your betters is not the death knell to Harmony that upstarts like you think it is. Otherwise, my organisation and those like it would never form.”
She faced Jay, not sparing Akira any more attention. “You can insist on the lonely path of arrogance, as your associate suggests, perhaps you will find another solution. Perhaps there exists a vial of immortality that will solve all your problems. Perhaps you won’t need to do anything ridiculous like receiving help.
“But perhaps that vial doesn’t exist.
“Perhaps you spend all your time searching for a cure and on day six you find it. But it takes three days to work, and you won’t have that luxury anymore. I’m offering an opportunity. I can recreate your essence channels, at a cost of course. I can’t guarantee a full recovery in seven days. But I can guarantee a fighter’s chance, and that’s more than anyone else in this room can offer.”
Jay weighed up his options. He trusted Akira a hell of a lot more than the witch sat in front of him, that was a given. He knew that his friend had a good theoretical knowledge of essence, for a beginner at least. But was it better than the High Matron’s?
Then came the issue of certainty. For all the trust Jay had in Akira, he made no guarantees. All the goodwill in the world wouldn’t heal Jay's arms, and if Akira knew somewhere to go… Well they’d be there instead of here.
Life was a lot simpler when all I had to worry about was punching people.
“Can you give him time to decide?” Lyra said, her first words slicing through Jay’s reflective silence.
The High Matron deliberated for but a moment.
“You have until this evening; if you wait longer, your chance of recovering before your next fight will be too low for me to invest the effort. My offer is as follows. I will redraw the essence pathways in your arms, I will also offer my assistance in teaching you how to use them over the next week. In return, I want 10% of your accrued contribution points over the next two months. There will be no negotiation on these terms. Please leave the building and do not return unless you intend to take up my offer.”
Awkward silence hung over the room.
Akira's voice shattered it.
“Sounds like it’s time to leave guys!” He said, mockingly cheerful after such a tense encounter. “Agatha, would you be so kind as to lead us towards the exit?”
The young witch looked at the High Matron. Receiving a slight nod, she opened the door. Jay thanked the High Matron, more out of politeness than gratitude. While she had answered some of the questions he’d held when he entered the room, she’d also given Jay far more to chew on as he exited.
A situation that he’d grown far too used to lately.
They exited in silence. A mob of thoughts marched through Jay’s head. Even if he was allowed to speak in the hazy corridors, he wouldn’t have wanted to.
After the trio had all left the building, Jay looked at his two friends.
He wasn’t the only one to let out a huge sigh of relief as the entrance to Pavan Hall clicked shut.