CHAPTER 5: ROCKS

To Dan’s confusion, his father was unexpectedly serious that night. After a short but filling dinner thrown together and delivered by more culinary-attuned members of the Valyon family, he had been sworn to secrecy. Not about his new status as an immortal, like Dan might have assumed, but moreso because something, somewhere, had gone intensely wrong.

Not in the sense that it wasn’t a spectacular event for Dan to breakthrough so easily into the fourth level of the Channel Building state. No, it was because a mere Spirit Gathering elixir – something his father had been ceaselessly stringent in identifying – simply couldn’t contain so much energy.

The purpose of the elixir was to give a budding or untalented person a smooth entry into the first stage. It contained just enough – or slightly more than enough, really – energy of each attribute to awaken just about anybody to the first level of Channel Building.

While his father was intensely confused and shut himself into their relatively sparse library all night, Dan had a short nap and explored the nearby woods.

The Valyon family were a relatively large family for the mountain hamlet they inhabited. There were only two other families that might compare, and one was the city lord’s residence.

It was perhaps too ostentatious to crown a city lord in a mountain hamlet with a population of no more than four or five thousand, but each population centre under the Blue Ice Palace would have one designated, nonetheless. There was no exception. The Blue Ice Palace was the governing immortal sect of the region, and it would designate city lords to its villages, towns, and cities to maintain order and levy taxes.

City lords also held responsibility for the settlement’s safety. If it weren’t for that, the mundane woods that Dan now walked would have been crawling with fierce beasts. Naturally, it had once been that way.

Instead of running out to search for beasts or worse, Dan merely looked for a quiet spot in the woods, and he eventually found one. The woods were relatively sparse, and in truth, most of it was quiet. There were few reasons to venture past the outskirts.

Thwam!

“Ow-ow-ow!”

Dan shook his hand vigorously and bit his lip.

Creaaaak.

The thin tree he’d punched with all-too-much force whacked the earth with aplomb, and he stood stupefied. If he’d tried doing something so ridiculous a mere day earlier, all he would have accomplished is a broken hand. While he’d still bruised his fingers, there was a deep satisfaction welling up inside his chest.

He was basically invincible among mortals now, right?

With a strange smile and a skip to his step, Dan returned home that night and subsequently failed to hide his bruised hand.

“Dan… what did you do?”

His father hadn’t been pleased about his frolicking into the woods. That was when, after Dan vehemently argued for a way to gauge his strength, he was presented with a much simpler solution.

“Rocks.”

It was morning again. His father had promised to deliver the night prior, and Dan had gone to sleep satisfied that he had won something. When day rolled around and his stone rooster did its song and dance, he’d even anticipated finding a practice dummy of some sort in the yard.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Hmm, you might be right.”

The simple wooded backdoor flopped open, and his father’s sandals tapped against the dirt and greenery. The first rays of the morning star softly illuminated the line of gradually larger stones and cast long shadows that drew wide spectres along the walls.

Dan wasn’t particularly excited about something as mundane as a series of large, unrefined stones, but he was still curious.

“Did you just want me to lift them?”

His father nodded. “The smallest one is roughly the size I’d expect an ordinary adult to lift.”

Dan eyed the monstrosity with a guarded look. “You really think so?” It was a fold larger than his head, and in comparison to the stone, his small bony hands seemed a lot… less.

“You’ll know when you try.”

With a snide smile, Dan squared up against the stone and carefully lowered into a squat.

“One… two…” his hands gripped the bottom of the uneven rock, and with a heave, he pulled. “Three!”

The rock lifted barely an inch, and Dan slipped. His pelvis crashed against the rock, and he barely held a squeal before crumpling amongst the grass beside it.

“O-ow…”

His father couldn’t hold back his laughter. It wasn’t even close.

…

“Alright, Dan, son, remember… You’re nature aspected, right?”

“I-Yeah, I have nature energy.” Dan nodded and, after rubbing his inner thigh with a wince, stood to his full height.

“Try applying it to your feet this time. You’re surrounded with nature, why not use it as leverage so as not to slip?”

The alternative was merely being careful, but to his father, it was long clear that any lesson was worth learning.

The grass crunched beneath Dan’s sandals, and he stared down inquisitively. “To my feet?”

He gave it an attempt, out of sheer respect for his father. When it did nothing, he wasn’t surprised.

“I don’t know…”

“Take the sandals off.”

That made more sense. The grass – slightly wet – pleasantly tickled the soles of his feet. Something about it brought a smile to his face.

To the matter at hand, Dan disturbed the constant loop of energies surging through his channels, his meridians and his dantian. A stream broke directly from the spiritual organ, and the energy dipped down his body, following unseen paths, where it eventually arrived at the soles of his feet.

“And then?”

There was something at the edge of his senses, an idea that he couldn’t fully grasp, that pulled at his mind.

“Make it do what you want.”

What he wanted? Well, he certainly didn’t want to slip again. Focused on his footing, Dan recited choice words in his mind and tightened his fists.

Sticky. Feet. Sticky. Feet.

Just when he felt the tactile movement of his energies down his spine, a pebble struck him in the forehead.

“Why- you bastard!”

His father snickered and flicked another one, hitting Dan’s nose and almost making it bleed. In fact, thinking of it, it really ought to have drawn blood, but maybe something to do with the spirit energies still infusing his flesh helped him out.

“You can’t always shut-out your senses when working on a problem. And no swearing!”

Another pebble flicked over, but Dan shifted his head from its trajectory. Instead, the small rock fell against his robed shoulder. He only felt a slight impact.

“I got it, I got- ow!”

“Be better!”

“What do you mean be better?!”

It might have been intended as a lesson in focus, but as ten pebbles turned to hundreds, and seconds into well over an hour, the intention was somewhat lost.

“Where are you getting all these stones?”

It was a genuine question fraught with frustration and exhaustion.

“Who said I was throwing stones?”

Dan immediately looked down, only to realize that, indeed, there wasn’t anything at all by his feet. It was confusing enough that the next pebble struck his face.

After that, slightly apologetic, his father ended the impromptu lesson and explained that he had merely thrown hardened water. Not ice, or so he said, but that only left Dan more confused…

In the end, Dan was able to not only lift the first stone easily above his head, but also the second, and the third. His feet held steady as if held within a stone cast, and only when he went to lift the fourth – this one half the size of his father and nearly himself, did he have serious trouble.

“I can… I-I…”

He dropped it.

Plunk.

The stone had serious weight. The echoes of its fall burned Dan’s eardrums, and the burst of displaced air cooled his skin.

His father, lackadaisically leaned against the back door and half-watching and half-writing into his journal, gave a short smile.

“Nothing strange about this, at least.”

“But aren’t I pretty strong?”

“You’re perfectly strong.”