Aerien’s POV
‘I don’t see what the problem is. Just train as a mage, you won’t have to worry about fighting like that.’ This was Gaerien’s absolutely flabbergasting answer to the issue I described with my meditation blocking my ability to sense intent.
‘You know absolutely nothing about what a fight is like, do you?’ I responded. ‘Or rather, you cannot possibly be that stupid. I will grant you enough benefit of the doubt to assume you probably are just fooling yourself because you are assisted by my meditation making a hole in the rules-enforcing world barrier and all that.’
That’s the thing. Gaerien had told me once that apparently my meditation held a property essential to the few mages that existed on Earth with its thick and absolute world barrier that resisted all magic. That property was the ability to pierce the world barrier and make a hole, thus granting a mage of Earth the ability to ignore the rules that negated all magic.
In the case of this world, it apparently has some property that prevents her from “cultivating,” which is the term she uses to describe the process of gathering energy to become a goddess once again. Apparently, the term “cultivation” is literally to cultivate your soul and raise it like a plant, giving it the proper fertilizer and nutrients to grow strong. And so, she needs me in order to allow herself to “cultivate” properly. It would actually be rather inconvenient for her if I were to stop doing my combat meditation at all times as I have made my habit.
‘Well, I really can’t offer you anything. I don’t know much about your meditation or combat methods in particular. Maybe you can just stop the meditation when there’s a combat situation?’
‘I need to be able to sense intent at all times, otherwise I won’t know if there’s an attack coming. I can get blind-sided rather easily without that.’
‘So, are you saying you’re actually going to just stop? Well, I’m not sure that would do you much good anyway. This is an elf village, right? They’re all fey here, they don’t make spirit energy for you to sense.’
That would be another interesting wrinkle in this world for me. The fey would have a natural advantage over me if I could not sense their intent. Or rather, I would loose the advantage that I had come to enjoy in my previous life when it came to the fey.
‘Well, my meditation serves your purposes, but it seriously does not serve mine. I might have to somehow concoct a new combat meditation that serves my needs better after all. I mean, simply being an elf already provides me with the effects of the fire chi.’
‘Wow wow wow! Wait! Ok, let me think. I’m sure we can come up with some way of managing this. I mean, it really doesn’t make sense to just throw out a meditation that’s been perfected over thousands of years like yours! You have absolutely no idea how many millions of people a cultivator would kill for in order to get ahold of a method like yours!’
‘Well, I’m not a cultivator trying to become a god or anything, so why would I want it?’
‘You went down to get that seed there to practice with, right?’ She said, indicating the nut I had gotten Ether guy to give me last night. ‘You did that because you want to practice being a mage, right? Well, magic is something you need to cultivate in order to develop. Mages are basically one of the early steps toward the process of cultivating toward godhood.’
‘Well, I guess that makes sense. So they are related, huh? However, I think my meditation might hold me back from learning the spell Ether guy was teaching me. My meditation hampered my ability to sense the spirit energy inside this nut, and my gut is absolutely screaming at me that I am going to need the ability to sense it in order to learn this spell.’
‘Well, maybe if you arrange your inner world correctly then you could… maybe… focus the energy more so you don’t have as much spilling over into your body?’
‘Inner world?’
‘What!? Don’t tell me you’ve never entered your inner world before!’
‘I seriously have absolutely no idea at all what you are talking about.’
‘What!? You… you seriously don’t know about a cultivator’s inner world!?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not a cultivator.’
‘You have such a high class meditation, and yet…’ She trails off, leaving several seconds of complete silence across our psychic link. ‘Ok, I guess I’m going to have to explain this then. Your inner world is basically the inside of your spirit. During a cultivator’s meditations, they have to use a sort of strong visualization in order to shape your spirit. In order to do this, you actually create an imaginary world inside of your spirit, and use strong images in order to re-arrange it. You can think of it kinda like arranging furniture inside yourself. Normally a particular meditation will have a way it recommends you arrange things and what you should visualize, but if you are pioneering a new path then it’s possible you may have to just start making things up and arranging things in a way that you think will be beneficial to you.’
‘Anyway,’ She goes on ‘I take it you, despite having a pretty strong meditation, don’t actually have any kind of recommendations like this. If the problem is as big as you say it is, there HAS to be something you can do to arrange your inner world to where you won’t have this problem.’
‘I wouldn’t even know where to begin with something like that.’ I respond to her.
‘Well, first you are going to have to figure out how to enter your inner world. In order to do that, you are going to have to learn how to stop meditating like a warrior and start meditating like a cultivator.’
‘So, all this time I’ve been the physical fitness teacher, you’re saying now it’s time for you to become the magic teacher?’
‘Absolutely!’
Well, she certainly seems motivated. Amazing how geared up she gets when I threaten to take away her free access to a loophole in the rules of this world.
-
Túeth’s POV
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Once again, Túeth was standing in front of the master’s house. She had lost track of how long she had been standing in front of this tree, working up the courage to send her mana into it and alert the master to her presence. She was very conflicted about this whole idea. She still felt very unworthy of the idea of becoming a mage’s apprentice. There was also... well, she tried not to think about that other issue. She would just feel even worse about herself if she even admitted to herself that was part of what was holding her back. In fact, the mere fact the thought had crossed her mind just now had crushed her courage enough that it had caused the will she had just worked up to crumble.
“Good, you came.” Túeth jumped as she heard the master’s voice coming from the opening that had just formed in the tree, creating a doorway. How had he known she was even there!? Well, of course, he was a magus. Of course he should have his ways.
“mm.. Master!” She responds, clearly looking like a frightened cat. Well, she had just lost her chance to back down. To do so now would be an insult to the master who had invited her, but... No! She would have to tell him!
“Well, come in then.” He said, turning his back on her and walking in. This was not going right at all. How was it that he seemed to take away her opportunities to retreat with every word and action he took? In that way, somehow, Túeth found herself walking into the master’s house.
She took a seat at the table, and then looked up at the master who sat down quite heavily in his own chair. Something about the way he sat down unsettled her. It was… wrong somehow. It did not contain the same grace that she had become accustomed to him presenting every time she had met him in the past. Nothing at all like how a great magus such as him ought to be.
“Umm…” She looked up, showing a concerned face.
“What? Oh, yes! Sorry, I am rather tired today.” He responds, having a difficult expression on his face. “It’s probably not something you would want to hear today. Another time perhaps.” He placed his hand over his forehead, his thumb and middle finger on each of his temples, and let out a breath to focus himself. She could guess from his response that it had something to do with the girls. He was likely trying to be considerate of her feelings by not mentioning them, but it was pretty clear from reading between the lines just a little.
Túeth suddenly felt bad about how she had thought about him a moment ago. His short responses urging her inside without waiting for what she had to say. It wasn’t from any kind of manipulation as she had thought, it was simply that he was tired. Suddenly, a faint ghost of a smile creeped onto Túeth’s lips as she imagined this great master running around trying to keep four small children in line.
On that subject, she could hear them moving around a bit upstairs, but they really didn’t seem that noisy. The master had said yesterday that they were pretty well behaved usually. Clearly they had caused trouble for him last night though.
-
Aerien’s POV
(Well then, let’s begin.) Gaerien said aloud after we had set the boys to do their own exercises. We were laying next to each other, hand-in-hand with our heads propped up against a single pillow. The curvature of a baby’s back is simply not structured in such a way as to easily get into some kind of meditative pose, so we didn’t even try. It was fine though. I had learned plenty about meditation in my previous life.
My combat meditation is in a class called a moving meditation. A moving meditation is considered to be the single most advanced kind of meditation there is. Meditations that use breathing, mantras, or some mental trick are far lower in terms of how good they are at clearing your mind of distracting thoughts. However, the one weakness that a moving meditation has is that it is not capable of achieving the level of truly deep visualization to do what Gaerien was describing.
‘So, I am about to attempt something REALLY crazy here.’Gaerien said, initiating our mental link through our hands that were holding one another. ‘Actually, about the only reason I might be able to do this is because of the way I set up my own inner world. And, just like with our thought communication here, I think you’re the only person in the world I will be able to do this with. Well, this is EXTRA exclusive to you. I might be able to communicate with other people like this as well later once I gain more power, but I will absolutely never be able to do what I’m about to do with anyone else.’
‘Ok, Ok, enough with the build-up. Spit it out already.’
‘Ah, yes, well... I’m going to invite you into my inner world. Normally this would be impossible. Absolutely impossible. However, there are so many unusual things in our circumstances that I wound up setting up my inner world in a very special way that will allow you to come into it.’
‘Right then, so how are we going to do this?’
‘Well, you start settling yourself into a meditative state at the same time as me. Try to visualize some kind of doorway of light or something of the sort. Once I create it for you, you should be able to go through.’
‘A doorway, huh? I think a friend of mine tried some kind of amateur hypnotic regression therapy on me once that involved going through a visualized doorway, it didn’t work. My mind refused to even accept going through that doorway.’
‘Your friend sounds like someone who was just goofing around. I actually know what I’m doing here.’
‘Yeah, she was definitely rather amateur about it. It’s not like I’m entirely unsuggestible or anything, she just used bad visualization techniques. Another guy used a different suggestion technique where he had me loosely hold a coin between my fingers and suggested it was getting heavy and I would find it drop from my fingers as I lost my grip on it. That one actually worked.’
‘This is not hypnosis. You know that, right? It’s a meditation, and this is not going to work unless the both of us do a very good job visualizing here.’
‘Alright, yeah. I’m good enough with meditation. If you don’t ask me to visualize anything too crazy or unusual, I think I can probably manage it.’
‘Alright then, let’s start.’
I started my meditation at the same time as her. I was not at all unfamiliar with stationary meditations either. In fact, my own combat meditation also had a stationary counterpart. It was also a fairly advanced and refined form of meditation. It involved both a mantra and a mudra. Mantras are the more well known components of meditation. Everyone has heard of Gregorian chants and other such things used as mantras, or might be familiar with the old stereotype in meditation of an old man sitting on top of a mountain chanting the word “oum” over and over again. That was a mantra.
A mantra is essentially anything at all that involves a sound made by the person meditating. This sound serves as a mnemonic key to speed up your ability to achieve a meditative state, and it also helps to focus the mind on that sound rather than allowing your mind to wander. Since this was the stationary counterpart to a combat meditation, it could not afford to have all that complex of a mantra. The mantra for my meditation was not a sound or a chant. It was just a simple breathing rhythm. In fact, it consisted of four different breathing rhythms. Well, five if you counted void. However, void was literally a lack of breath, so it’s pretty hard to count.
This meditation also had a mudra to it. Not as many people know about mudras in meditation. A mudra is another form of mnemonic tool to enhance your meditation. Where a mantra is a sound, a mudra is a physical position that you take with your body. My meditation had four mudras which consisted only of hand positions, and then again, it also had void. Void, once again, was significant for its lack of any of the traditional tools. It was only a mindset that contemplated the concept of void, and there was no specific suggested hand position for it. However, the very fact that the other four had hand positions, suddenly going without a hand position after having gone through the previous four makes it rather easy to suddenly set the idea of something missing, a “void” of what had been there before.
Thinking about Gaerien’s request to visualize something I can go through in order to enter her world, and knowing that my combat meditation is the one I know the best, it’s pretty clear what I’m going to need to do. I begin going through my meditation in sequence. It is a five stage meditation, going through the four Greek elements and then finishing with void once the elements sequence has been gone through. If Gaerien wants some kind of doorway, how about I create a doorway from fire? In order to visualize it the best though, it really will serve me best to go through it in sequence.
I begin the sequence with earth. Earth’s mantra is a slow breath in, followed by a slow breath out. The mudra is to place the thumb against the pinky finger. The mindset is a calmness and stability of the unmoving earth.
Next comes water. The water’s mudra is the thumb against the ring finger. The mantra is completely tied up in the visualization. The water’s mantra is a long and slow breath in like a rolling wave of the ocean, followed by a quick and sharp breath out as though that wave had just crashed against the shore. Contrary to expectations, the chi of water is actually the serious power form of the combat style, and holds most of the real ferocious attacks that the style has.
Finally, I arrive at the fire phase of the meditation. The mantra of fire is a quick breath in, and then a quick breath out. It is essentially hyperventelating on purpose. The purpose of the fire phase of the meditation is to focus on the idea of a fire burning and granting energy to your body, and also to focus on the idea of getting used to the idea of this breathing pattern so that you can be at peace with it and transition out of it more easily. You are advised while learning this four elements meditation that fire is not a state you want to stay in for a long period of time, and you want to get used to the idea of recognizing when you are in this state so you can more easily transition out of it. Incidentally, the mudra is the thumb placed against the middle finger.
After gathering a strong and healthy flame inside my heart with this phase of the meditation, I shift my thumb over to touch my index finger, thus creating the mudra of the wind phase as I move right along. The wind’s mantra is a short breath in, followed by a long and heavy breath out. It is actually an extremely difficult breathing pattern. I would actually call it the hardest of the five. I can still remember when I first learned it that it took me quite a bit of effort to get it right without becoming light headed, choking from the breath tickling my throat, or just running out of breath during the breathing out phase too quickly.
Since the idea this time was to cultivate a flame, I fed the fire using the oxygen of the wind. Every time I breathed out with the wind’s mantra, I focused on the idea of the flame absorbing the oxygen from that wind and becoming brighter and stronger. Suddenly, I felt something change. A bright light appeared in the middle of the flame I was visualizing, and it opened up and grew several times bigger. At the same time, I felt as though I was getting pulled deeper into my own visualization and suddenly the outside world where the boys were a short distance away from Gaerien and I laying atop the bed vanished and this large vibrant flame real enough I could almost feel the heat coming off of it became the only thing I could perceive.
I realized at this moment that this must be the doorway Gaerien said she was going to create. I had created my end of it, and she must have just created hers. Well, time to see what this inner world of hers looked like then. It was my choice to make my end of the doorway a flame, so I guess I have no choice but to simply walk through it. I look up to the old man part of my mind as baby Aerien, and then I look down to the small child I have come to start imagining as a four year old as the old man, and then as both of us together and of one mind I walk into the flame.