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…there is a thread that–when pulled–will unravel the whole tapestry. And I found that thread.
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There was an air of quiet contemplation when the group exited Chenxi’s room, and Matt absentmindedly noticed the thoughtful looks on the others’ faces as his own mind was sorting through what he had learned.
Not everything is immediately useful. We need to find more information about the sects and how their society worked, eventually. It may offer useful lessons not just on how a society can survive down here, but how do you manage a society with such a wide range of powers? Would the most powerful one not just… take everything? Perhaps that is what the Ruling Council was about. It seemed to be structured on the most powerful sects, and if they had their own internal–Matt stopped that chain of thought, and reminded himself to focus on the more immediate concerns.
He was suddenly very conscious of the threads of energy floating around in his mind, reaching in towards the sphere–his core–where they were absorbed to join the other spinning symbols. With his new knowledge, he now understood that the core was slowly absorbing the essence, accumulating the extra energy and adding it to the ever-growing cloud of patterns. Chenxi had described how meditation and performing the forms were instrumental in managing the influx of essence, carefully adding it to the existing essence in the core, pushing it towards evolution.
Cultivation. At the moment, I am just… kind of making it up as I go along. Meditation felt right, and I did it. The form called to me, so I exercised. Chenxi described entire schools dedicated to learning how to cultivate efficiently; to reach for the most useful aspects of their powers. And…
With a chill, Matt remembered a single paragraph, hidden away in an entry. There are ways to do it wrong. Very wrong. Her friend, that… What was his name, the one she was in love with at the beginning? Anyway. He did… something. She didn’t describe what it was. Only that the power consumed him, burned him out from the inside and left him a shell of a man.
Worried, Matt observed his core, seeing it pulse and spin. It appeared innocent, but he recognised the potential for power, the potential for destruction. It had been collecting essence for several days now. Chenxi’s journal described how cultivators would carefully absorb the essence, cycling it before letting it fold into the rest of the essence in their cores, using special techniques. Techniques that would ensure not only compatibility with whatever cultivation goals they were working towards, but to achieve a stable core.
She had used that term often, a stable core. One day she had been concerned after a day of cycling. Her core had weaknesses. Power was leaking out and causing her pain, but her Sifu had helped to correct the structure of her core.
He had just… been letting it happen.
I need to find more information, more books. Matt picked up the pace as they walked onwards.
A doorway led them into a hallway which was even wider and taller, with darker stonework lit by magical crystals mounted over six doors. Each door was intricately carved, and Matt registered how each door displayed a distinct image. The first door on their left was carved in the likeness of a tree, with its branches extending to cover the entire surface of the door. The first door on their right held a simple circle, tightly packed with fine symbols.
Pete looked around to confirm that they were all attentive before he pushed open the door with the tree and looked inside. “It’s clear. But… Wow. Look at this,” he said as he entered the room.
Matt followed behind, his mouth falling open as he looked around. The room was much larger than the ones in the previous corridor, with space for a large bed, a dining table complete with six exquisite wooden chairs, and a writing desk. Shelves and cupboards lined the walls. All of that was secondary, however, to the artwork covering the entire far wall: a huge tapestry that depicted two windows. The windows were overlooking what appeared to be a lush forest, with the appearance of green plants woven into the material in a display of art that took Matt’s breath away. It was as if the wall held real windows that opened to a magical garden, with lifelike vines climbing up through the window frames, weaving into the room and following trellises that were woven into the fabric to each side of the windows, joining with other plants and flowers that covered the wall. The weave was glowing with a soft, green light, bathing the room in an atmosphere of a garden in springtime. Peering closer, Matt’s heart beat faster when he noticed that threads of essence traced the weave of the tapestry; dark green filaments that mirrored the patterns in the scene.
He was so enraptured by the artwork that he didn’t notice Mia joining him before she reached out to let her fingers trace along the weave. “That is gorgeous.”
As her fingers touched the fabric, Matt saw sparks of green ripple out from her fingertips.
“It is absolutely beautiful,” he confirmed. “And the threads… They are your threads. Growth essence must somehow be woven into the fabric. Did you see the spark when you touched it?”
“I felt it,” she whispered and reached out again to touch the fabric. For a long time she just stood there, before looking up at him, her face shining with wonder. “Who were these people?” she said, echoing his own thoughts, before turning to the others with a big smile on her face.
“This room is mine!”
Matt laughed at the rare sight of pure joy on Mia’s face and squeezed her shoulder. He stood like that for a moment, his hand resting on her, before he turned away. The other door, with the carving of a circle filled with symbols, was calling to him.
His heart beat faster as he made his way out of the room and across the corridor. For a moment, he considered calling back to Pete to join him, but they were busy going through the contents of the other room. He took a moment to inspect the carving on the door, noticing the swirling array of symbols inside the circle. He still had no idea what the symbols meant, but he was starting to recognise them. One specific symbol, a circle that spiralled for two rotations before arcing to the left, almost always connected with a symbol that looked like a small house with an intersection oval. Another, a square symbol with two short dashes, repeated at regular intervals, almost like the punctuation Mia had taught him.
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Before he could lose himself in the symbols, he took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
The dimensions of the room appeared similar to Mia’s room, but where the other room was filled with elaborate furnishings, this room was almost empty in comparison. A simple bed stood to one side, with a small chest at its foot. The other side of the room held a small writing desk and a plain wooden chair, with a bookshelf set into the wall behind the desk. Otherwise, the room was bare, except for a strange elevated circular platform in the middle of the room which was facing the tapestry that covered the opposite wall.
Oh… Matt breathed in as he saw the wall.
Where the tapestry in the other room filled the space with colour and light, this wall hanging instilled a sense of calm serenity. Dark, black and blue colours dominated the artwork, and Matt was utterly captivated as he studied the patterns. He stepped forward as his eyes traced the patterns that were woven into the fabric. The centre of the weave held a large circle, which was filled with an extraordinarily delicate design. When seen from a distance it appeared a uniform, dark blue colour, but as he got closer, he could pick up different colours packed densely together in thin filaments that repeated in symbols and patterns. Each of the symbols was no larger than the tip of his finger, and there were… Thousands of them, connecting and interacting with a complexity that took his breath away.
With a huge grin on his face, he reached out to touch the fabric, flinching back when his touch caused flashes of energy to ignite in the centre of the sphere to shoot out along thin tendrils in all directions, travelling from symbol to symbol and making them glow, a dark, blue light racing across the pattern.
He watched the pattern lighting up in fascination, waiting for it to fade out before repeating the action. Again, a sharp pulse of essence flowed from his fingertips out towards the edges.
His mind was still mesmerised by the symbols that were wrought into the weave of the artwork, when he felt his attention inexplicably drawn to a dark corner of the room with a simple weapon rack he had overlooked at first.
It was as if the room buzzed with vibrations of energy when his eyes caught on shimmering metal at the top of a long, dark wooden handle.
Slowly, he walked over and looked at it, a weapon unlike anything he had ever seen. Its length rivalled that of a spear, and instead of a sharp point, it had a two foot long blade which was reminiscent of a sword, but instead of the sharp, angular contours of a sword, it featured a smoothly curving line that ended in a point just as sharp as any spear he had seen. Excitement built inside him as he reached out for the weapon and took it from the rack.
Vic appeared in the doorway and saw Matt holding the weapon. “What is that?” He gaped at Matt as he stepped back to take a few tentative swings with the strange polearm.
“Don’t know,” Matt answered with a spreading grin, getting a feel for the weight and balance of the weapon. “But I like it.” There was a rightness to the weapon, its heft, the feel of the handle against his palms.
He took a few more swings and was about to reach for the harness hanging on the weapon rack when his core pulsed with sharp energy, as if it was calling out to him. Looking inwards, the core began to glow more intensely and extended tendrils of threads that reached out through his body, through his arms, and into the strange weapon. He gasped as the threads continued to travel through the handle, tracing upward in tightening circles until reaching the blade. The blade flashed once with intense red power.
Vic’s jaw dropped, and he stared at Matt, whose own eyes were wide in awe. He felt a growing connection of threads that connected the blade with his sphere, his core expanding and expelling essence which was forced out through his body and into the blade. For a moment, he considered letting go of the weapon. Whatever was going on might be dangerous. But the simple thought of dropping it just felt wrong, and instead Matt willed the connection to build.
“Wow!” Vic whispered, and made his way over to Matt, his steps tentative. “It is beautiful–” Vic started and held a hand out towards the glowing blade, before suddenly jerking it back while the hand was still some distance from the sharp edge. “Ouch! What… What was that? It felt like…” Vic looked down at his hand, and Matt saw the thin red line across Vic’s palm, welling with blood that dripped down on the floor.
“What…?” Matt exclaimed. “Your hand was nowhere near the blade?”
Mia had heard the commotion and walked over to Vic, already casting her skill and beginning to heal the wound. “What is going on here?”
“No,” Vic said, ignoring Mia and answering Matt, his voice strangely subdued. “It wasn’t. But it was sharp, even at a distance. It felt like a blade, a sharp blade, and it cut into me like nothing. I didn’t use any strength. I just had my hand there. Far away from the blade. That thing is fucking dangerous,” Vic added, a dangerous glint in his eyes as he grinned at Matt.
Matt didn’t answer. The weapon was still drawing energy from him, demanding his essence, and his core was responding, freely giving its essence and letting threads of energy flow into the blade in ever-increasing amounts. With an effort of will, Matt tried to pull back the river of energy that was flowing through him, but he might as well try to hold back a river with his hands. The essence kept flowing, weaving together in symbols drawn in all possible colours, filling the strange weapon with his energy.
He vaguely heard Mia ask him if he was ok, and barely managed a quick nod, his entire attention fixed on whatever was going on. What kind of weapon was this? Not only was it pulling on the threads, on his essence, but it was somehow keeping all that energy, storing it. Where did all the energy go? The glow surrounding the blade kept increasing in size and intensity, creating an aura glowing with a dark red that extended further and further into the room. In the periphery of his vision, he saw Vic and Mia retreat towards the doorway as the light pushed out.
His core was spinning faster with every second, as if the act of the weapon pulling on the threads gave momentum to the spin, propelling it to go faster and faster. With every passing moment, energy left the core, and Matt could see it shrink at a rapid pace. He trembled as energy vibrated through his entire body.
His curiosity to observe the process was overriding his concern at the possible dangerous consequences of whatever was happening. He could not explain why, but there was a harmony to the process that resonated with his spirit, with his Way, and he kept shifting his attention between his shrinking core and the flow of energy joining with the weapon, unaware of the smile that was forming on his lips.
His essence flowed into the weapon, and the weapon became an extension of Matt.
He observed a cloud of pulsating energy forming somewhere within the rippling concept of the sharp blade, invisibly connected to his core. As he breathed in, the core expanded and the sphere taking shape in the weapon contracted. As he breathed out, the reverse happened. The weapon was forming its own core, and the two cores became mirror images of one another. With each breath, with each thought, with each beat of his heart, both cores spun faster, spinning and coalescing the chaos of threads into a dense pattern of symbols, shrinking more and more in size as they became less translucent, more opaque. More dense.
After an indeterminate length of time, both cores had become glassy orbs; one in his mind, one in his weapon. Which was now just as much a part of him as his foot or his arm or his head.
As the last tendril of essence, dense with symbols of power, relinquished the connection between his mind and the weapon; the bond that was left was unbreakable. Matt did not know any other way to explain it. The weapon was him, and he was the weapon.
Confused and in a daze, he just stood there, barely registering the concerned looks of the others standing far outside the doorway. He noticed the aura of the weapon filling the room with an angry glow, and with a thought, he pulled it back. The weapon answered, and the glow dimmed as the weapon let its aura fade.
He gave a tired smile to the others to show them that he was ok, and turned towards the single chair in the room, when his legs gave way beneath him.