Meilin stepped down onto the metal deck. The glass that looked so fragile, that she had tried to pry, crack, or muscle aside, casually opened with the wave of the soulforger’s hand. Ajha Kai hovered before her, the child that was not a child. He stared at her with inhuman golden eyes. In one hand, he held a lantern filled with swirling prismatic light.
“Your father has agreed to my terms,” he landed on the deck beside her. “I will honor my promise to him and give you an opportunity.”
“You're not afraid I’ll try to escape?” Meilin stretched. Her captivity had stifled her spirit more than she let on.
“Escape from what?” He cocked his head sideways, his eyes curious.
“From here,” she waved her hands around the deck, ”from your soul space.”
She took a step towards the rail. From her cell, she couldn’t see the structure he’d created. Looking at it now, she could see it was a massive pagoda. She peered over the rail to the tiers beneath before looking up to the ones high above.
It was an architectural marvel, a combination of the familiar and foreign, with its strange brown metallic cylindrical contraptions, coppery meridians, and glowing lanterns. How many souls does he have here?
She tried levitating, lifting herself imperceptibly from the floor. I could try it. She looked out to the stars beyond, the vast wilderness of the galaxy that spread before her. I could jump this rail and disappear into that beautiful heaven, find a planet with some people, and possibly possess one. She wondered if anyone had escaped from the soulforger before. If so, they were probably living out there somewhere. Maybe she could find them.
He stepped up to the rail with her and gazed into the starscape. She first examined his face, noting the boyish grin, then watched his preternatural eyes roaming over the stars, searching for something.
She knew little of soulforgers. She knew they started their cultivation journey by working on their soul by creating a soul space. Something about that, the ability to create a structure from the soul, gave them the ability to harvest and bind souls.
“Ready?" having found something, he turned and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
His smile seemed almost mischievous. Meilin tried to follow his gaze but didn’t see anything where he looked. She took his hand in hers. Without a preamble, the world blurred; lights and colors blended and smoothed into a long tunnel. When the flashing stopped, she looked around. She and the soulforger hovered in space. A violet sun hung to her right, the size of an orange, warming her with light. Beneath her, a world spread out. The round gem set against the dark sky was covered in blue waters and brown continents and capped by white poles.
He released her hand and floated forward to hover before her.
“I’m going to clear your old cultivation base before resuscitating you. The Iceheart’s energy isn’t compatible with your soul. You can thank your mother for that.”
“What?” she asked incredulously. “Strip my cultivation?”
“The conflict between that energy and your soul was causing your bodily weakness. And you should never have cultivated a heart core, either. You must experiment with a pelvic or throat core to see which is correct.”
She cultivated correctly, not skipping any steps, and worked through years of pain and anguish cultivating the Iceheart. The energy froze her from the inside, leaving her stiff and listless, but she did it, and she did it better than any of her brothers or sisters.
“What did you say?” she asked again.
“You will have to start all over again. This time though, it will be much easier. You will be using a compatible energy type. With your previous experience, you’ll quickly gain back what you lost.”
All those years of painful cultivation… wasted. She would have cried had he not been there. It was too much to think about.
“In any case, I promised your father I would give you a place to cultivate and some primordial energy to refine. Here it is.”
She mulled over what he said. My soul wasn’t compatible with the elemental ice core of the Iceheart clan? She considered all the cultivation sessions that ended in illness, and still, she forced herself. At least now I know why it was so much harder for me. I thought I wasn’t as good as everyone.
“Wait, what do you mean here, it is?” She looked back over to him.
“This planet. This will be yours to cultivate on. Come on,” he said before flying toward the planet's surface.
She watched him descend. He never turned back. I could leave right now. She hovered and looked around. There was little else in this stretch of space. She grinned. I could do it. She thought about just heading off into the emptiness of space.
When she caught up with him, he was hovering over the planet.
“I found a suitable place. Let’s head down.” Again he left before her. This time she followed him, catching up and flying by his side as he zipped down through the atmosphere, over the white poles, then further south until he came to a great mountain range. He flew along the ridgeline, dipping below the thick clouds as they approached a canyon.
The canyon was deep and wide, and cradled a raging river that swelled with whitecapped water. They descended into the canyon, traveling along the grand river until coming to a tributary. There the soulforger turned and followed the narrow waterway until the steep sides turned into gentler slopes.
He set down on a rock formation in the center of the waterway. Before Meilin landed, the soulforger had begun construction. Towering conifers fell, denuded of branches, and rendered into timbers in moments. These large timbers flew down and found slots carved into the solid rock to fit themselves. Planks from smaller branches joined them, and the floor was created. Everywhere he looked, the materials of the world transformed themselves into useable forms and fitted themselves such that in only moments a cabin was complete.
She landed on the boards and stepped inside under the high-slate roof. He was inside the entrance, in the center of the room. Small stones flew around him and joined into a pedestal base before a bowl formed. She watched the bowl turn smooth as glass and black as night.
He turned and walked further into the house. Everywhere he stepped, details of the structure resolved. Carved windows, raised areas for seating, a bed for sleeping, and a fire pit all settled into place. It was all beautiful, but his following words put an end to her temporary enjoyment.
“You will live here until you can refine this energy into something compatible,” he walked back out and pulled his lantern up, pouring it into the black bowl. The golden light illuminated the entrance. “Your soul is white, so I imagine the energy to be white, but there are countless white energies. Your task is to find the right one.”
“How will I do that exactly?” she crossed her arms.
“Soulforgers can avoid much of the latter bottlenecks by aligning their soul with a specific concept, exactly how a spirit beast does. You already have this natural advantage, but unlike a spirit beast, you must cultivate manually.”
“I can only guide you this way: each energy type is animated by a higher-level concept. You will have to be introspective and discover what resonates with you.”
He stepped out onto the deck.
“That’s it?” she followed him out.
“You can leave when you’ve cultivated to my satisfaction. I will return to refill your energy as needed.”
With that, he stepped into the air and disappeared. Meilin floated up after him or tried to but found herself firmly rooted to the ground.
“Ajha Kai,” she cursed. She sat down on the deck; the light was more pink than violet this time of day. The trees in this world were a paler green - and reflected the sun more brilliantly. She listened to the peaceful water for a long time. At least he picked an excellent location to cultivate.
She cultivated later that night and the next day with no success. She took a break to walk around the area and become familiar with it before returning that night to cultivate again. Each time she took a wisp from the bowl, held it in her hands and tried to imagine it as some kind of white energy.
Eventually, the wisp would transform into something else, a white wisp, before instantly vanishing. It went on like this for a month. When she ran low on energy, the soulforger returned.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It just vanishes as soon as it changes,” she complained. He listened, filled the pool, and left without a word.
Another month passed with only marginal success. She was able to refine elemental ice energy, being very familiar with it. It was stable and maintained its form. That was informative but otherwise pointless. She had already concluded that primordial energy needed a solid concept as a structure. Anything weak or vague and resultant refined energy would vanish immediately.
The soulforger refilled her energy one day when she was on a walk. Something she had started to do more regularly. The bed he created couldn’t be used for sleep. A fact she’d discovered very quickly. She couldn’t fall asleep. To rest, she would meditate in bed. It was as close to sleep as she could get.
Another month passed with no progress. Snow fell, the early signs of winter. The family of brown-speckled birds flew away. The familiar sounds of their chirping turned into winter winds. Winter came and went. She cultivated every day, but it was more of a ritual; she made no progress.
With the arrival of spring, a family of foxes appeared. Fish swam upstream in large schools. One afternoon, the soulforger returned. He held a lamp with replacement energy, but she hadn’t used much. He filled up what little he could.
“Having a hard time?” he asked.
Meilin had gone so long without hearing another’s voice that a smile came to her face.
“I was able to create snow energy,” she grabbed a wisp from the bowl. Within moments the golden flicker went pale and lost its color. It was whitish; sure, there was a tint of blue, but it was primarily white.
“Progress,” he congratulated her.
Her smile vanished. Progress? She failed. He left a few moments later. The following month she didn’t cultivate at all. That month turned into two and two into a year. Winter came and went again; spring came, then summer. The summers were stormy, with afternoon rainstorms that sent the river into a brief torrent. Inspired by the whitewater, she took some primordial energy and cultivated the concept of whitewater.
It was the first time she’d tried in over a year, and she felt out of practice. But she managed it. That energy was white with a slight greenish tint. Another failure. The following day she tried again, this time with the idea of a white cloud. White cloud energy, or water vapor, seemed white but also was tinted blue. Another failure.
Feathers, white with brown. Marble, white with gray. She traveled the mountainside for inspiration, anything that might give her some clue about the elusive white energy type. That year she saw progress, but the soulforger only returned twice. She wasn’t present for either delivery.
One day in late autumn, as she stood on the deck, she realized she wasn’t progressing. Over the last year, she had cultivated all the wrong white energy types. Without thinking, she stepped off the deck and started walking. She kept walking. She walked all day and all night and all day the next day.
The tributary turned into a river, and the river a lake. She crossed the lake and kept going. She kept going and didn’t stop. Meilin walked from the canyon out onto the plains, passed it, through the desert, to new mountains, and past those to the coast. When she got to the ocean, she built a raft and sailed over the water.
With no sleep, she could just travel nonstop without tiring. Her craft was swamped in a storm, so she swam to an island and lived there for two years, exploring every part of it. When ready to leave, she swam into the ocean and kept swimming. Nearly every day, she would see something white and make a note of something to try when she returned to her cultivation house, but nothing she saw resonated with her.
She traveled the world on foot or by swimming. It took forty-seven years to visit every continent, explore every significant island, stand on both snow-capped poles, and swim to the bottom of the ocean. When her list of white concepts grew to over three hundred, she decided to return home.
She thought it would be simple to retrace her journey, but after searching for fifteen years, she concluded she had no idea where it was.
Meilin was tired. Tired and unable to sleep, she walked on. Her thoughts on the matter were simple, she wasn’t where she needed to be, so there was no point staying where she was, so she moved on. She just moved. Eventually, she would find it, as long as she kept moving.
So she moved, and one day she came across a familiar canyon. She followed the canyon, tracing each tributary until she saw her cabin. Tears fell from her eyes, unbidden at the sight of the place. She stepped onto the deck and felt its familiar timbers under her feet.
Tired, she walked into the entry. A family of squirrels had taken up residence in her bed and angrily chirped at her. She ignored them and took a wisp of energy in hand.
Sitting on her deck, she began working through the mental list she had accumulated over the years.
Snow, clouds, ice, northern bears, crown seashells, roses, lilies, daisies, orchids, the moon, the salt flats, swan feathers, dove feathers, mushrooms… And when she finished that list of tangible physical things, she had another list of abstract ideas.
Purity, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, clarity, illumination, enlightenment, peace, tranquility, serenity, perfection, completion, spirituality, divinity, holiness, transcendence, surrealism… and for each of these, she had refined these ideas.
She ran out of spiritual energy the day after she returned. None of what she had tried thus far resonated. That night the soulforger returned; he wore the same clothes and looked exactly as she remembered.
She’d had a lot of time to think about the soulforger. Her jailor. She’d repeatedly replayed the conversations she had with him since she last saw him. Her face heated with warmth, even though she was a soul body and had no blood; the embarrassment she felt from that first conversation was acute.
She teased him, asking him if he was worried about her escaping. He just smiled. She buried her face in her hands. This whole heaven is in his soul space. She didn’t know how that was possible but had become sure of it.
She guessed this planet was just one of millions. She had traveled this world and taken in every detail, explored everything she came across, every leaf, every fish, bird, cricket, every grain of sand, spec of grass, or drop of rain; each detail was perfect, and it was all held in his mind casually, without effort. And it wasn’t just the one heaven; there were others besides.
She scampered to her knees and kowtowed to him, her head touching the ground.
“This one has eyes but could not see,” her voice rough after years of disuse.
“I gave you the world to cultivate in, but I wasn’t expecting you to make such liberal use of it.” he smiled and scratched his head. “Tell me, how did you find it?”
“Lonely,” she replied, holding back the water in her eyes. “The world is beautiful and perfect in every way. But you have wasted it on this little one.”
“We’ll see,” he glanced over to the bowl. “In any case, you’re making progress.” He stood and quickly refilled the bowl. He was gone before she looked up.
She cultivated all night. The next day, she cultivated nonstop. She made it through every abstract concept finding some she favored. When she ran dry later that day, he appeared. She showed him the three most promising energies.
One he liked but encouraged her to continue. It wasn’t quite right. How he knew that it wasn’t quite right, she couldn’t tell, but she believed him.
That whole next month, she progressively refined her concept of holy. She thought of it as a connection to the divine and a state of being after undergoing a spiritual refinement by a higher power. The resultant energy was so close, she could feel it - it felt nearly perfect. But Ahja Kai always found a better way to understand it or was able to clarify some vague aspects of her understanding.
It’s as though he is refining me.
It was a simple idea, thought in passing. But the whole day, as she mediated, cultivated, and cleaned out bird nests and accumulated seasons of leaves, the thought returned to her repeatedly. He is refining me.
Later that night, as she was cultivating. She didn’t imagine the state of being holy. She imagined the process of becoming holy, of ridding oneself of one’s misconceptions, misunderstanding, and ignorance. She imagined the concept of being slowly refined into a pure, less contaminated version of herself.
The sparkling white energy that resulted was the closest she felt to resonance.
Almost there.
She stepped quickly back and got another wisp of golden energy. Taking a seated posture, she sat and mediated, reviewing all her thoughts.
The focus on process was correct; instead of focusing on the completed state of perfect holiness, focusing on the idea of being refined felt right. Correct, but not precisely correct. What would he do?
She imagined herself being refined, impurities being removed, imperfections being transformed into perfections, and behind it all, a higher power guiding the process. Him guiding it.
White energy pulsed in her palm, warm and vibrant. It was the energy of transformation, transformation towards perfection. She laughed, her voice clumsy. She cried. To Meilin, this pure white was beautiful. It was hope. I found you.
“Finally,” The soulforger sighed. “You’re ready.”