Kai continued funneling energy to his topmost core, filling and compressing it into a sphere. Mei had left his room moments ago and had yet to return; he carried on, unable to place too much faith in his friend or the medicine of this world.
“Nearly there,” he thought as he continued to push forward in creating a new core.
“I’m recording the process,” the fox spoke from the foot of the bed, “to analyze it later.”
“If there is a later,” Kai thought grimly. He continued to redirect the flow from his soul space into the new core he was forming. As before, he was able to see the flow of the energy of the core contort around an empty void. As he was considering this he felt a pulse shoot through his body.
One second Kai was weighed down by the fear of death, and remorse for his carelessness, and the next he was free, unshackled from those chains. He felt light and carefree and smiled, even though it hurt. What a remarkable feeling. To know one’s self, to see the tides that are pushing me forward, or keeping me back. This must be transcendence.
“Success Relay,” Kai reported before taking a deep shuddering breath. He filled his lungs with all the air he could endure and breathed out sending the stress and anxiety out with it. With a thought, Kai appeared in his soul space. He sat on his dais, a smile on his face.
“How wonderful,” Kai smiled, extending his hands in front of him, examining them. “I expected this… transcendent feeling to fade by coming here but it has not.” He stood and stepped down from the dais. He strolled, deliberately, with eyes that took in every detail with amazement and wonder.
“I am so afraid Relay,” he admitted, “I don’t want to die but I’m too afraid to do what needs to be done. What is this feeling good for? I think I should try living without fear for a while.” Kai breathed deeply and then exhaled in a long slow breath. His face brightened, a smile forming on his face. “There. That is so much better.”
He walked slowly to the screen. With a wave of his hand the timer disappeared, “Yes, yes, we know things are dire.”
“Fear is generally what keeps people from taking unnecessary risks, that has some rather obvious benefits.” Relay sounded unconvinced.
“Risks are what we need right now, and besides fear also paralyzes, that’s not helpful right now,” Kai smiled. “Now tell me about the Soul Shearing Art, because I don’t have much confidence in being able to advance five ranks in the God’s Eye Art, which is the only way it could be useful in this situation.”
Relay looked at Kai and then back at the board. Images from the Soul Shearing Art appeared on the screen. Despite the serious consequences of using soul fusion, the manual had scant details. There were a few diagrams that showed the common results of forcefully shattering a soul in pieces, but the description of how to shatter the soul was lacking.
“The impact of spiritual energy on the soul can shear the soul into fragments as depicted in the following illustrations…” Kai reviewed the illustrations. “For lower quality souls, or when using overmuch spiritual energy, expect fewer fragments, with three being the lowest known occurrence and seven the highest.” Kai slid his finger along the screen flipping the pages to look at the illustrations of the soul.
To him, it looked like soul fragments had a definite shape, like parts of a whole that might be re-assembled, if cracking them apart hadn’t partially destroyed them.
“Seems very crude,” Kai noted, “to smash a soul with spiritual energy until it breaks into pieces. Too much and you destroy the whole thing, too little and it does nothing. And look at these shapes, doesn’t it remind you of lattice structure common to crystal formations?”
Relay reviewed the images again, noting the similarities. “Shearing does imply a strong cohesion and weak cohesion. It is along these weaker cohesion planes the soul can be fragmented.”
“And what does the Soul Shearing Art say about the use of these soul fragments, how is one to fuse with them afterward?”
“On soul fusion, it says little, other than the brief indicator that each soul space provides the soul forger this ability,” Relay reported, “There is a location that may be an interface for this, I can take you there.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Kai turned a gleam in his eye, “show me.”
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The journey to the bowels of the pagoda had been brief. Kai stood in the center of three massive brass pillars, each goliath support reaching from the floor, with its impressive base, to the ceiling, their capitals integrated into the strong framework holding the ceiling up. Each was wider than a double doorway. Kai felt small standing in the midst of them.
Seamless and solid they each had a single shape etched into their polished surface, on one a square, on another a triangle, and the last a circle.
“These are impressive, but what makes you think they have anything to do with soul fusion?” Kai asked.
“First, these three pillars support this whole place, and since this is your soul space, that means these are likely directly connected to your soul. Second, if I wanted to create something to protect my soul, I would shield it in something impenetrable. These columns may look like brass, but the density is way higher, I’ve never seen anything as dense, and lastly…” Relay moved to the pillar with the square. He just hovered there in front of it. The moment stretched out in silence and Kai just watched him. “See, nothing. Everywhere else in this pagoda, I can manipulate the structure with my thoughts, I just tried to open this, and nothing. It doesn’t respond to me.”
“And you think it’s because of my natural protections if it is indeed shielding my soul? I see.” Kai stepped to the column with the square. He placed his hand in the middle of the square. He willed it to open. The square sank into the column, moving in, then shifted down, exposing the core of the column to Kai’s inspection. Golden light illuminated the square, and inside that Kai could see a grid of squares, connected by millions of energy streams.
“I think you are right,” Kai observed the squares moving, rotating. A good number of them had no connections, quite a few. “So I take the soul fragments and what… just shove them in here? That seems rather inelegant.”
He withdrew his hand and the square portal closed, becoming a solid metal column once again. He stepped to the column with the circle and opened that one. That was a bright stream of pure white light, blindingly so. He tried to shield his eyes and see anything but could make out no details. He closed that and went to the last column.
Placing his hand on it he opened it. As before a bright white light emanated from the column, only this was different. Kai was able to see three colors, blue, green, and red. Swirling inside, shapes and lines of light; those three colors rotated in a complex network of interconnected nodes. He tried to make out the shape of the nodes, they were not triangular. It was pointless. He closed that and stepped back into the center of the columns.
“I have no idea what to do here,” Kai admitted, “Shoving soul fragments in these apertures to my soul seems wrong. Yeah, that feels wrong.” Kai turned and walked back up to the command center.
“So let’s see if we can split a soul up, without damaging it. Any suggestions?”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Relay hovered along beside him.
“If souls have stronger and weaker bonds, then we need to apply some kind of force we can finely graduate to minimize damage.”
On the way back to the central hub Kai detoured to the laboratory.
“Sound has amplitude and frequency - we can finely tune that.” He thought for a second, “That applies to the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum.” His eyes fell across the bank of glass lenses.
“Each soul has its hue, maybe we try with a disharmonic light wave?” Kai speculated. He picked up one of the large lenses, it was a color-filtering lens. “I’ll get one of the souls.”
With a thought, Kai reappeared in front of the lantern, outside of the pagoda. From where he stood he could look out over the railing at the beautiful starscape. He walked to the rail slowly, taking in the majestic sight of the galaxy spinning beyond. He stood there for a minute serenely looking into the stars, before returning to the blue glowing lantern.
He teleported back to the laboratory, blue soul in hand.
“It’s beautiful here,” Kai sighed, “it would be a shame to lose it. I haven’t even got a chance to explore much.”
“Place the soul here,” Relay stood in a central part of the lab next to a pedestal that held a glass chamber. The glass was surrounded by brass bands that locked it to a brass base. Kai walked there and lowered the soul gently into the chamber.
The illuminated blue soul floated in the chamber as a brass fixture descended from the ceiling. It settled onto the top of the chamber locking the soul inside. Kai heard the hiss of decompression as the chamber was vacuum sealed.
“Okay let’s measure this light frequency and start,” Kai moved to pick up a filter lens. He picked up the large lens by the brass collar, with both hands, holding it out in front of him like a dinner plate. With a quick inspection, he found a slot in the base and slipped it into place.
“Let’s start with less than one percent and move up from there.”
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Mei returned with Rhi Tat. Tracks of tears ran down her face as the two stepped into the room.
A quick look and Master Rhi Tat knew what had happened.
“Deviation,” he breathed the word aloud. Mei crumpled to the floor, crying.
“Time for that later. Time is of the essence child, go get the doctor. Tell him Sun Kai suffered from some deviation, now run bring him as quick as possible.”
Mei struggled, then sprang to her feet, determined and reinvigorated. She darted out of the room. Master Tat looked at Kai, his lips tightening into a rictus grin.
“You burn too bright young master Kai,” his cold eyes glanced over the charred body before he laughed coldly. Stepping up to the bed he looked down at Kai’s face. Kai’s eyes were closed, his attention elsewhere.
“The wounds are not beyond repair,” he admitted, nodding at the injuries, “but you are only seven. How can we justify spending such precious resources on you before receiving proof of your worth, especially when we have already invested so much? Decisions, decisions.”
The master gathered his black robes, and sat on the edge of the bed, looking away from the ruined cultivator.
“I oversee all the initiates and I take pride in that. It takes quite a bit of work to make sure unworthy disciples never rise in our ranks. Despite our glorious reputation, times are hard. Every year it becomes harder and harder. We only maintain our rank by ruthlessly pulling up weeds that would choke the life from what few productive saplings we cultivate.”
He sighed and shook his head. His hands found the seam of his robe and felt for the hidden needles there. He pulled one deftly from its hiding place.
“Soulforgers are always more trouble than they are worth, and now this.” he sighed and turned, holding a thin black needle over Kai’s face. The needle gleamed in the light, black as night.
“Are you hearing me, Kai? Tell me one reason why I shouldn’t end you right now?”
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Amplitude, frequency, hue, directionality, and every other possible variable they could think of was measured, qualified, controlled, and variated. Failures were abandoned, and successes were followed up, and expanded, leading to new theories, and new experiments. It quickly became apparent that discordance, the leading theory, yielded no appreciable result. Harmonic frequencies had no effect whatsoever. No visible light had an effect so they tried ultraviolet and infrared. Ultraviolet caused a measurable expansion of the soul's surface area, and so they continued experimenting in that direction.
Kai looked into the glass chamber at the geometric shapes held together by strings of light. There were eight components, a large central mass that was roughly spherical surrounded by seven floating shapes of varying geometry. To Kai, they looked like large moons orbiting a small planet.
High-powered x-rays were agitating the soul’s tentative connection splitting the smaller fragments from the core, energizing the weaker bonds that held the outer shell around the core. Kai looked at one of the satellite shapes. It stood out from the rest, a perfect dodecahedron, celestial purple, gleaming like a polished gemstone. The other smaller satellites were malformed, translucent, or faded and dull.
“Master Tast said that it only excelled at one thing, I’m guessing that’s the reason. Fascinating.” Kai speculated.
“Mei is back,” Relay reported, “she brought someone.”
“Oh, finally some help,” Kai smiled. He continued staring at the soul, the blue tendrils holding the geometry in place around the core. “So what do we do with this? I still have no idea.”
“Well, at least we’ve isolated a method to harvest soul fragments that will not damage them. That’s further than the authors of the Soul Shearing Art got, so we should consider that a great achievement.”
Harvesting the celestial purple fragment, Kai considered. I could probably just reach through the glass and pull it right out, but then what?
He shook his head and dismissed any speculations. Still not enough data.
“Let’s leave this for now, and head back to see what help is available.” With that Kai vanished.
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Kai’s eyes opened to see Master Rhi Tat standing over him.
“Are you hearing me, Kai? Tell me one reason I shouldn’t just end you right now.”
If Kai had to speculate on what the cultivator’s emotional state was based on the thin set of his lips and the coldness of his eyes, he would have guessed boredom. Master Tat seemed bored.
Kai's eyes opened wider when he processed the words. Wait what? End me? No, you should send for help, I need medical attention.
He opened his mouth to say as much but all that came out were gurgles and wheezes. His throat felt packed with glass gravel.
“Gggg..gg, ugghurbp….” Master Tat repeated the sickly sounds mockingly, “That’s about the best reasoning I can come up with too.” With a deft motion, the Master of the initiates slipped the dark needle into Kai’s chest and pulled it out again. With a practiced motion, he instantly hid the needle.
“Consider this a mercy child. The paralytic will stop your heart and quickly put an end to your suffering.” the Master smiled, “Sure I’ll have to suffer an inquiry from the Soul Hall, but your cultivation deviation is obvious. I may even be rewarded by the other Halls.”
Kai felt his body go numb. The pain was gone. He took one last breath before his lungs seized.