Breathe. Kai froze as the massive black dragon loomed over him. Fear gripped him, his pulse quickening. As he looked inside the beast’s terrible maw, focused on the gigantic teeth, his breathing became rapid, each breath short and shallow. The hot breath of the beast passed over him and he felt a cold sweat form on his forehead in response. He was completely overmatched by the creature; he could not resist or challenge him. Ba-bum. He felt his pulse echo powerfully in his ears. Ba-bum. He looked up, at the dragon, his soul light flooded his eyes, bringing the familiar warmth, but no relief. He looked at the dragon, the black scales shimmering with some purple light. With a final pounding of his heart, his eyes dilated, pushing the golden prismatic rim outward towards the edges of his eyes, filling the center of his eyes with inner black.
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This child’s body fits poorly, like a flight suit being asked to stretch too far. I feel awkward; I move oddly. This dissonance is brief, and I quickly forget about it. My body is perfect. Natural. I feel at home in a way I have not felt in a long time. This is me. I am a child.
I walk through a meadow, though it is strange. “Why are the colors correct, but the shapes so indistinct”, I wonder.
I conclude I am in a painting, but with that thought, indistinct shapes resolve into patches of flowers, bushes, trees, and open expanses of grass. The sun breaks through the canopy of trees above, sending dappled rays over the serene landscape. I notice the blue sky above and feel at peace. I forget the confusing indistinct qualities of just a moment prior. I forget the idea of being in a painting.
I am standing in a meadow and holding a white bow in one hand. This confuses me, but I ignore it. I ignore the fact that I have never held a bow before. I ignore the fact that the bow is indistinct - that it is just barely substantial as though made from the idea of a bow instead of a being a real bow. I hold it, and I raise it, and I bring my draw hand up to string, which is no string but looks like a thread of light. I notice my fingers, that they hold something, something that confuses me, but that confusion is gone instantly; I forget about it. I hold a paired device, it loops over my fingers and palm. With it, I can grasp the bowstring of light and pull it back. I know how to use it, and how it works to affix the light in place until my fingers release it.
I look around the meadow for my target. There is nothing here but nature, beautiful and serene. I look and find nothing until I spot it. There, a single black flower blooms, an orchid of shadow. I turn and feel right. This is my target. I feel nothing but peace as I bring my bow up, bring my hand to the string, pull back the string, and aim, as though I have done it a thousand times. It brings me joy to feel the tension transferred from my muscles into the taut bow, to feel the powerful string slide back against my cheek. It feels so good that I slowly release the bow, and let it drop back to my side before taking a deep breath.
It feels right and I want to feel it again. I pull the bow up, drawing it, my fingers lightly reaching for the string they can never touch. As my fingers draw near, the arrow is there, a white arrow, long and straight. I do not question where it comes from. This is how it should be. The arrow will appear when you pull the string. I know this. I pull back on the string, my muscles tense, and the bow flexes, it is a heavy bow, but I am strong. It feels good to hold the bow back, to look down the arrow, to see the target quiver in the wind.
I hold it there. I am strong. I wait.
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The echoing of metal gears immediately drew Relay’s attention away from the lists where he worked. He turned and zoomed out of the laboratory. From his location, near the lab, he could hear the massive plates of the pagoda gate, sliding open, slowly at first, then much faster. From the railing looking down, he watched as the golden beam that flooded through the gate widened, the golden beam of energy growing from a small beam to a massive beam, and beyond as the iris continued to open.
“Not good,” Relay echoed as he zipped down towards the control room. “Not good,” he repeated his voice nervous.
Arriving at the control panel he input the commands to halt and reclose the pagoda gate. When the commands did nothing he tried again and again. After repeated failures and having exercised all his options, he zipped from the control room and dropped over the rail, hovering down to position himself beside the gate.
Approaching the steadily growing beam of energy, Relay felt the heat increase around him.
“Is this you Braxon?” Relay shouted into the beam, expecting no response. We’ve got to work out our communication issues. With a final creak, clank, and rumble the great pagoda’s iris locked in the fully open position. With a thought, Relay raised a blue energy shield around himself, allowing him to approach the Nova Ajha energy beam. He looked inside at the energetic cloud and the refraction element that allowed him to see the galaxy beyond. Everything seemed to be normal.
He braced himself to exert his will, to force the iris to close. With the full force of his thoughts, he willed the pagoda gate closed. Again, and again he tried until, at last, he heard the great grinding gears of the iris begin to wind up.
“Excellent,” he focused on the iris, expecting to see the blades sliding closed. Instead, there was no motion, behind him he heard the grinding gears of the outer gate. He turned and recognized the truth. He hadn’t heard the sound of the pagoda gate closing, but rather the outer gate opening.
He immediately headed into the massive beam of energy towards the outer gate, his blue shield protecting him from golden prismatic energy. The outer gate’s blades slid open, in incremental measure; the iris opening, letting the golden energy through. He raced toward the gate, flying inside the energy beam through the opening gate and then out into the emptiness of the void beyond.
Astonished, he turned to look back. The massive torrent of energy, powerful and thrumming, just stopped at the gate, as though still being held back even though no iris blocked the way. No energy crossed the outer gate, as though held back by some invisible barrier, nothing, save the small thread of energy that he’d noticed many times before. Curious, Relay floated towards the gate and passed from the empty void on the outside into the energy building up on the inside.
There was no barrier he could detect and still, the energy remained fixed in place. He floated back inside the gate, back towards the pagoda. Something was going on but he was powerless to stop it, and that he concluded, could only mean that Braxon was doing something. He would watch, watch and wait.
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The old soulforger looked at the small child, young for an initiate, and already a proper soulforger. It was difficult to believe. The Soul Hall had been struggling to maintain their advantageous position in the Celestial Temple, with the last 10 years of soulforgers being one kind of disappointment or another, and now some miraculous prodigy arrives, a soulforger at age seven, and just as the new year begins. Gao Jie was hesitant to believe it, but there the evidence stood, small as he was.
A golden ring of prismatic soul light illuminated the boy’s eyes.
Poor thing, I scared him. Gao Jie often treated initiates to this kind of greeting, perhaps it was a guilty pleasure, but it wasn’t just that. His experience told him that children, once frightened, would seldom cause problems for him. He hated killing promising cultivators, and if a little fear, in the beginning, prevent an attempted theft later on, he would commit himself to it, even if he secretly enjoyed it.
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The boy's eyes grew wide, the ring of soul light pushed out towards the rim, his pupil expanding to fill his eyes with black. It was eerie and unexpected and caused the great Goa Jie to pause and look into the child’s black pupils. There was something there, something beyond the blackness. Instantly, his scales rippled, and his senses became acute. He took a step back.
What has he forged himself with? That was the first question that passed through his mind, but that was quickly forgotten. He was a predator, an ancient soulforger that had survived through his power and instincts and right now his instincts were screaming at him. Impossible. And yet, his hands rose automatically in front of him, a defense barrier between him and the child. He watched with equal parts horror and curiosity, as he reacted by slipping into his combat mind, his awareness sending a pulse into the area, exploring the future and the past.
The pulse returned and he felt a great claw seize his heart, the sign of his impending doom. It had been an age since he had felt that fear. He stepped back again and looked around, confused. There was no one else present, no secret expert, no hidden assassin, just the boy. He sent out his awareness again, this time directed; it returned instantly providing him an impression. There was some impending event, some cataclysm that dwarfed him, something so immense he would not survive, and not just he, the Archive’s array formation wouldn’t be sufficient to protect him nor the books and scrolls. It was a doom so sudden it was beyond anything he’d imagined possible. Deep inside the protected reaches of the Treasure Hall, he felt safe, but his instincts screamed at him, a mounting pressure foretold some coming apocalypse. The pressure built and built until he quaked under the shadow of it, he shook feeling the approaching annihilation.
“Stop”, Gao Jie shouted. He forced himself, with great effort, to lower his hands, to sit still. “Sun Kai! We are not enemies. Stand down.” He swallowed nervously and waited.
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Kai looked up at the dragon, but he wasn’t where he had been, he had moved. Something’s different. He let his hands drop to his side. Was I just holding something? The fleeting thought faded, leaving a very puzzled-looking Kai standing there. That was inexplicable, one moment he was standing there still, frightened stiff, and the next the dragon had stepped away and he hadn’t noticed. His brow creased in confusion and he looked over to where the dragon sat.
“This little one is looking for a suitable cultivation method,” Kai bowed towards the fearsome dragon, “and was instructed to find one referred to as Old Jie.”
“Old Jie,” the dragon’s mouth widened, then flattened, in an inscrutable expression. He blew out a blast of hot air, but this time he didn’t direct it toward Kai. He looked at the boy, with curiosity and trepidation. The imposing presence he felt just seconds prior was gone, the impending doom gone, vanished like the attention of a bored god. But Gao Jie was not easily fooled. He had experience with monsters. This boy is a monster, perhaps even more than me.
“I am Elder Gao Jie and the Guardian of The Archive. I may be old according to the standards of man, but for dragon kind, I am still young.” Jie’s voice was deep, rumbling, though Kai noticed, not as loud as before.
“This little one apologies for offending the honorable Elder,” Kai bowed before stepping forward a step. “I haven’t met a dragon before and fear I lack the skill to avoid offending the honorable Elder.”
“I’m not a jade teacup that one needs worry about chipping, ” he breathed out a breath in irritation. “You say you are here for a cultivation method. How much merit have you?”
Kai fished out his coins, holding them up for the dragon to inspect.
“That little,” the dragon grumbled, “for becoming the youngest soulforger in our Temple’s history?” The Soul Hall has fallen if it could only afford this much, the dragon thought.
Kai shrugged. “I’m looking for a traditional cultivation method, something related to planets, or moons, or stars; I have an affinity toward celestial bodies I wish to explore.”
“Traditional cultivation? Short-sighted! What might take you years to accomplish with a traditional method can be achieved in less than one with a few proper, well-chosen, fusions.”
Kai's brow furrowed. This was the part where he had to convince him. He considered the problem.
“My first experiences in soul fusion gave me sufficient reason to approach it much more cautiously. I need time to…” Kai searched for an appropriate word, “consolidate and comprehend my soul before further work there. Meanwhile, I can’t fall behind my peers. I would like to try dual cultivating so that I will always have something to work on, even when consolidating.”
The dragon regarded him for a moment. His thoughts were indiscernible to Kai. After a long moment, he replied, “Still feels wasteful, especially of resources, resources that could better be used by other cultivators that do not have your natural gifts.”
Kai watched the dragon seemingly struggle with a decision. After waiting Gao Jie continued, “I will allow you to learn any traditional method with minimal resource requirements, and one soulforger method of any kind. This is to protect the Celestial Hall against shouldering the burden of two expensive resource requirements.”
Kai’s eyes brightened at this, “Thank you honored elder.”
“You may not thank me later,” the dragon turned and headed back into the rows of the Archive. “As you grow as a cultivator, your wealth will grow faster than your cultivation. The ability to substitute resources for hard work, when cultivating, can dramatically increase your rate of progress. Not so with these methods.”
The dragon stopped in front of a shelf, on which many manuals and scrolls sat. “From here,” he pointed, using his black-clawed hand, “to here. You may select from these. I’ll leave you to read through them and decide.”
He turned to leave but paused. Turning back he offered, “Most cultivators believe there are secret cultivation manuals here, superior methods suitable only for those of particular skill. There is some truth to that, but a greater truth is that any cultivation method can be superior in the hands of a superior cultivator. Beyond that, what is the greatest cultivation secret?”
The dragon paused and waited. When Kai only blinked his eyes and stayed silent Gao Jie continued.
“For every cultivation method, there exists some cultivator for whom that method uniquely benefits them due to their natural apprehension of the principles the method is grounded in. This harmony between method and cultivator is what distinguishes the truly exceptional cultivators from the rest. Attend me. Do not choose a method based on some fanciful name, or the powers promised. Find something that speaks to you in a personal way; even if the method seems mundane, you will fare better in selecting it.”
Kai turned to look at the methods; in front of each lay a plaque, on which a title and description were carved.
“This one thanks the honored Elder for your guidance.” Kai turned back and bowed to the elder.
Once the dragon had retreated elsewhere Kai turned back to the shelves.
“The Ten Steps of the King, The Grand Lotus Manual, 10,000 Li in One Heartbeat”, he started reading the titles. “The Celestial Coronation Method, Crimson Star Heart, The Heavenly Spirit Fusion Method, Divine Constellation Manifestation Practice,” Kai sighed. He looked down the long row of manuals. This is going to take a while.