Grand Master Bo looked upon his charges and did that rarest of all things for a Revered Grand Master, he cultivated patience.

The normal course of the universe, the proper order of things, was for prospective disciples to be taught the basics of cultivation by experienced Adepts who simply lacked the will or talent to rise any farther. Rather than be discarded, these lowest level members of the sect, forever doomed to be outer disciples, would spend years, often centuries if they were strong enough, sifting through the dross of the mortal world disciple prospects to find those bits of iron that could be hammered into something worthy by those of higher understanding. After all, one must search through a hundred mortals to find a single potential cultivators, a thousand cultivators to find a potential master, and a thousand masters to find a generational genius with the potential to ascend the steps of divinity. It had been fifteen hundred years since Grand Master Bo had been an over proud Adept teaching the mortal dross the testing had given him to find a few worthy bits of slag that might, with effort, be hammered enough to become an ingot of metal that a master might choose to look upon and see if a worthy tool could be fashioned from it. Most of those broke. Grand Master Bo could not even remember the names of those he had first taught the steps of cultivation and turned into disciples. They were so far beneath him even than that he could not wait to forget them. He had no idea if any of them went on to become Adepts, or even masters after. At the time it didn’t seem to matter. Only two things in this world mattered, power, and potential. Of the two, power was the sun that ruled the heavens and ordered the whole of the universe, and potential was the earth beneath the feet the powerful trod, it was the clay the powerful shaped, the resources they used to contend against others of power in the struggle to move beyond the sky itself, to ascend beyond the spheres as an Immortal ascendant, to walk in the Celestial Palace where the Celestial Dragons of the Celestial Bureaucracy ordered the heavens and earth at the will of the Divine Gods.

Yet, the demons were rising, and the sword cultivators of every generation were fewer, through the losses to the rising demons and the wisdom of the great clans of the sects not to waste promising disciples on martial paths where their endless potential could be wasted on a demons fang or sword. While it was beneath the dignity of the Supreme Masters of the various sects who stood at the threshold of Ascendence, it was the duty of the Grand Masters and the Masters that served them to see that sufficient resources were present so that those geniuses who had the potential to become Masters, Grand Masters, and even possibly the next Supreme Master to challenge the steps of heaven could cultivate that potential. The demons gnawed at the roots of that tree, and while the crown of the tree did not care to notice how it now trembled in the wind, the Masters and Grand Masters knew the sects were growing weak as the mortal world they rooted in for resources both human and crafted material was being devoured every year by demons.

How long before the trunk that was the sect could no longer support itself. How long before the tree no longer had the resources to train the cultivation progression of its geniuses? How long before there were so few sword adepts that the sect need actually fear the demons would no longer be content with mortal prey and would lift their eyes to the sects who had grown so filled with artists, poets, calligraphers, painters, musicians, alchemists, and crafters that those who filled the ranks of masters should need to fear to fall beneath the fang and blade of the rising demons? How long before the great tree that was his sect might fall, and the pathway for the ascension to heaven should be shattered by the malice of the impure, the rage of the demon?

This was the last chance. A hundred potentially unmatched potential cultivators had been summoned from a world without chi, a world where those whose had the potential to draw unlimited chi would not die when their infant body first cried out in joy or anger and opened itself fully to the world. Now he had children drawn from a world where the first rush of hormones would not draw the mana storm to tear apart the greatest of them before their adolescent bodies could form the mana channels that the adult body grew that allowed conscious cultivation might well have levels of ability undreamed of in this world where the potential gods died in infancy, where the potential dragons died in adolescence and only the mortals were left to walk the path of ascension.

Not one could be lost. Worse, they would be both the most ignorant of all potential disciples, coming from a world with no understanding at all of the natural laws of the universe, and the essence of chi, and those with the highest potential for understanding that this world had known since the dragons first lowered themselves to instruct the race of humanity on the secrets of chi. There was no one less than himself he would trust with the instruction of these potential geniuses, of the potential saviours not simply of the sect but humanity itself. There was only Grand Master Bo.

He cultivated patience, but these children had managed to do what should be impossible since he had attained a Spiritual Body and had neither no blood or organs, no muscle or bone inside him at all. They got on his last nerve.

Brock snarled. “Look you second rate Gandalf knock off, I am not going to sit around learning to breathe while some old bag plays elevator music that I am supposed to somehow tune into, and then spend hours doing fucking yoga poses to look like paintings of trees and pretend that is going to make me stronger. I am a FUCKING MMA FIGHTER. Do you know what that means grandpa? That means people who get in a cage and fight hand and foot, elbow and knee against other people with no safe zones or legal strikes bullshit. You know what you don’t see in those rings? Anyone who held onto this bullshit about kata or stances or spiritual forms. They got their teeth kicked out or howled their surrender like a bitch in heat while someone bent them in half and tore their joints apart. I am not going to sway like a willow in the wind, I am not going to feel the chi of the instructor and flow with it. I am going to kick the ass of everyone here until they tell me how to get me HOME”

The boy was normally fair skinned, his body fit and toned but not hugely muscled, but his face was flushed and his body tensed like that of a tiger and he clearly looked upon Grand Master Bo not as the superior predator, but as helpless prey. The fate of the world suddenly mattered not at all as his last nerve snapped and Grand Master Bo let the tiniest bit of his chi fill him and crossed the five meters between them in a single step. With the flick of a single finger, he sent the nearly hundred kilogram boy through three of his companions before hammering his body into the cedar wood pillar so hard that blood sprayed from his mouth to paint a pattern like a cherry blossom branch upon the white tatami mats of the training hall. The boys chest was visibly crushed and he struggled to breathe as his lungs no longer had place to expand. He slumped to the floor and began noisily dying.

Grand Master Bo thought this might be what he remembered from his time as an Adept as a “teaching moment.”

“In the world you were from, you knew only the mortal body. In such a world, moving your body like an animal may indeed allow you to inflict harm on one who strives to move in the ways of the spirit, because your world lacked the chi that binds the world, that flows from all life, that allows the will of the gods to shape it. Chi is the energy that flows from the natural laws of this universe, and from the life within us that was born from that chi. Those who wish to rise beyond the limits of mortal flesh, to cultivate their chi will learn to move beyond the base corruption of flesh, they will learn to bring chi within their bodies, will learn to make their body a thing that responds not to the brute power of muscle, but to the will of the ascendent made manifest through their chi. They will move like the wind, strike like thunder, and they will learn to shape the base materials of this world into miraculous tools. Tools like weapons that can shatter mountains, instruments that when played can summon or dismiss storms, or even pills like this one that can take a pathetic mortal body entirely crushed and more than half dead and restore to life and health.”

Striding past the students, he took a small pill box from his sleeve. “This is a lesser health pill, capable of restoring to full health anyone of body like stone. Since he is only a pathetic mortal and not even a cultivator, it is too strong for him, and he will be burning for days until his body either processes the excess chi or he dies. Some people may only learn through pain. Fear not, if that is the path you wish to walk, I will see that you have full instruction. Within the year you will all be skilled enough alchemists to make such pills yourself, but by that time I will expect under my instruction you will have passed beyond body like stone, and to at least body like iron, at which point you will require a more potent pill.”

Brock had ceased thrashing, his body no longer struggling to breathe, his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish out of water. Grand Master Bo placed a pill in his mouth and closed it firmly. A light blazed from Brock’s body as his body began to thrash. With his robe torn open, they could see the poking bones of his shattered ribs knit together and the sunken chest finally inflate. Then Brock began screaming, he screamed and screamed until the pain became too much and he was left rigid and locked, eyes open and staring at something the rest of the class was happy not to see.

Grand Master Bo turned and saw fear in all but three faces.

The sickly one, the one whose body had been in some sort of neck brace when she arrived, her eyes were on his like a vampire upon an open wound. In her face he could see the hunger for what he could teach, in her eyes he saw inhuman will, a will to master the flesh that had betrayed her, to master it and to surpass it.

“What is your name?” Grand Master Bo demanded.

“I am Serena Bales.” She said, without fear.

“What did you learn today?” He asked softly.

Her voice trembling with an emotion she could not identify, she answered honestly. “That the flesh does not rule.”

Grand Master Bo stroked his chin but did not let his smile show. So. One has been found.

He turned to the second girl, what was it with this world that half of those with the nerve to stand, and over half those with the wit not to challenge had been women? Less than ten percent of cultivators were women, yet over a third of the masters. Grand Master Bo was now questioning the reasoning for this disparity of opportunity and success. She was not physically weak. She had sun coloured hair, and was tanned like a peasant girl yet moved with the grace of a swordswoman. She showed none of the martial training of the boy he had just disciplined, yet her body moved with a greater degree of control and even power. She was not a dancer, not a fighter, but some sort of training had shaped her body and given much power to her spirit. She had been shocked by the violence, but had not retreated like the rest. She seemed not to be looking at the injured boy, but at the Grand Master himself. He felt her hungry eyes on his body, and for an amused moment he wondered if she dreamed of dual cultivation, as if Grand Master Bo would lower himself to take a Dao companion of such a low level. Then he realized, she was not hungry for his body, but was looking at his physically old and frail body, and the power and smoothness with which he moved and coveting the teachings that allowed it. So. A second has been found.

“What is your name?” He asked her.

“Andrea Proske, Grand Master.” She said, aping the style of address of the Adepts and Masters towards him, yet she did not cast her eyes down nor bow. She stood square on to him, focused upon his face and upon his words like a falcon awaiting the release to hunt. She was not defying him, no, she was focused on his words with an attention that lacked any semblance of subservience, yet promised obedience not out of fear but out of a hunger for what he offered.

He didn’t have the chance to ask his second question as she was already speaking.

“I learned that your teachings can break through the limits of flesh and I would very much like to learn as much as you are willing to teach me.” Her voice rang out with commitment without any trace of submission. The audacity of it made the Adepts and Masters hiss in shock and fury, but he waved them to silence with one long robed hand. They thought her impudent. They would ever serve and never command. She didn’t even notice. Her attention was solely on his words, his teachings, the petty social niceties of the sect may as well have been the crawling of ants beneath her feet. He thought about hiding his smile, but decided against it.

“Good. See that you do not waste my time and I will see what I may make of you.” He nodded and turned to the last who had not retreated. His gaze swept between Brock, the no longer broken boy, and Grand Master Bo. That boy was different than the rest. He was healthy, but untrained. His skin was black as coal and his tightly shorn hair was curled as lamb’s wool. He hid his eyes behind thick black rimmed glasses, but those eyes were darting about like a general surveying a battlefield or an alchemist watching the condensation of a concoction. No, it was the latter. This black skinned boy had an alchemist’s eyes, the eyes that sought always to see the workings of the work, the structure of the forces in their balance. It was never enough for a technique to work, for a formation to function, or a potion to be effective, he must always understand the forces that made it so, and to direct with his will, the efficacy of its change.

“What is your name, boy?” Grand Master Bo asked, noting the angry pride that snapped the boy’s eyes up to his own. Somehow calling him boy insulted him. Truly, for one who was older than ten generations of this child’s ancestor to not address him as boy would be strange. Still the Grand Master made a note of the effect. He would not use it save when he wished to prod or discipline him.

“My name is William Fitzgerald, Sir, and I would prefer you did not call me boy.” He said, bowing reasonably adeptly as the Masters had bowed to him. The Grand Master noted that he truly was offended by the word boy and wondered if this was something from his own land? Interesting. Now, was he worth accommodating?

“And what did you learn today?” Grand Master asked, wondering if the alchemist eyes of this boy were linked to an alchemist’s soul, or was he only able to see with his mind and not spirit.

“That this chi you talk about isn’t just some sort of magic, or martial art trick. You can use it to affect the material world. You can use it to reshape things without the use of machines or tools. You can do things with it that I can’t explain, but that seem to follow rules that you can instruct.” The boy said, his voice rising in the last bit as if in its own challenge. So. A fourth. Four students out of ninety eight. If these were not the two geniuses who had been stolen away by the demons, then what were those monsters like. Four students of such potential, counting the idiot who he had slapped down, had not been found in a thousand years. Yes. These four he would teach himself. The rest would be trained by the Masters, and would make good followers for these, his core disciples. After all, what were generals without troops?

“Yes Disciple. I can instruct. The rest of you may leave. You three, gather around me. We will begin the exercise again. You will adopt each pose and focus on your breathing. I want you to be aware of your body, and the energy within it. Feel that energy. Feel its shape and its form. The position you are in right now is part of our martial technique that focuses the chi of the body into the core. Now, you will breathe in, drawing in the chi, and as you move to the second position, stepping forward and allowing your weight to shift, as you exhale, you will push forward with your palms outward as if that force inside you was water and you were pushing it away with your hands.”

He watched them shifting stances, breathing deep and taking in chi. Their bodies were amazing, they were such pure conductors, even now the levels of chi they drew in unknowing would destroy the body of even an Adept with Body Like Stone. They drew it in like one with Body Like Iron and however poorly, they began to push it out of them as they shifted stances. Their mana channels were hopelessly blocked, but wide and deep as his own, if not greater. Their control was pathetic, the untrained and unformed grasping of an infant for a dangling toy, but the potential, by the Celestial Dragon, the potential of those childing hands made him shake.

“Feel the energy flowing out of you, now step back into the first position and draw that energy back in as you inhale.” Grand Master Bo could see the energy flow out of them as they had pushed, but now his senses saw a storm of mana swirl around Serena, the weak one, she did not breathe slowly and calmly as the rest, but drew in like a dragon about to breathe fire and wipe away an army.

Serena had felt the energy of this world had reversed the years of her wasting. She had long been losing the battle with her muscular dystrophy. Where others moved from child to adult in adolescence, feeling their body change and become a woman, feeling their body become powerful and even sexy, she had felt it become a prison, a cage, a tomb. Each year her muscled obeyed her less, and fought her more. She took the treatments, she did physiotherapy, but it was all about losing ground more slowly. That is all that science offered her, muscles that tensed but would not relax, leg muscles that grew distended and misshapen but not strong, neck muscles that could barely support her head. She moved like a little old lady, for fear her growing clumsiness would make her embarrassed again. She feared the looks of pity more than the cruelty of the laughter. She could rage against cruelty, but pity made her a victim and Serena was no victim. Since coming to this world, she had begun to feel strong as when she was a child and could actually run and play, not step carefully as to not fall, to run up steps and not carefully brace as you took each one carefully judging if your leg would choose to bear weight this time or not.

She had felt that power in her, then when she breathed out and concentrated on pushing outward as she stepped and made the pushing motion, she felt that power leave her. The voice of Grand Master Bo was in her ears, telling her to step back and breathe in that chi again, but Serena was in full panic. Her body, her gods damned body had betrayed her again, she stepped back not to obey the command but not to fall. She did not slowly inhale savouring the feel and flow of chi, she gasped desperately, dragging the air into her with the panic of a drowning woman breaking through the surface of the water with the last bit of strength. She worked her lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows to draw in air as deeply as she could, desperate to fill the yawning void of energy in her body before it failed her. She drew in so much energy her body blazed like a star, her flesh burned with the power of it, she felt every fiber of her body and soul catch that fire, and she felt it consuming her. She needed to let go, needed to let go before it consumed her but SHE WOULD NOT BE WEAK AGAIN!

Grand Master Bo was beside her in a heartbeat, his hand pressed to the small of her back, his voice whispering in her ear.

“Good, good, you have drawn in the Dragon’s chi, you feel it burning you, consuming you, devouring your mortal flesh, your mortal weakness, purging your impurities. You have drawn in too much for any mortal to hold, and it is a killing thing. Now you must choose, young dragon, do you die, or do you cast death upon your enemies? You have drawn the dragons breath, and if you simply breathe it out, you will burn and you will die. If you would die a mortal woman, than breathe out and breathe your last. If you would transcend humanity, then walk the path of the dragon AND ROAR!”

Serena opened her eyes and screamed. In it was all the rage and pain of years of growing helplessness, of the knowledge that every breath and every heartbeat was closer to an eternity of weakness and worthlessness. She opened her mouth and screamed the defiance of a soul that rejected humanity, and fire shot from her mouth and covered the back wall, igniting it in a torrent of flame. The masters staggered away, several raising barriers of glowing chi energy to protect themselves, others calling upon the water element to douse the flames and save the temple.

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Grand Master Bo stroked Serena’s back and whispered in her ear. “Good, good little dragon. Now, you have chosen to walk the path of ascension, to cultivate chi and purge your body of mortal weakness. Now, we will learn how to walk it and not die.”

Turning to his other disciples, and gesturing at the writhing Brock behind them. “These are two dramatic ways to break through and become cultivators. They are dangerous, and painful. Now, for those who would like to break through a little more gently, we will return to our exercises, and continue.”

Three very attentive students returned to practicing their forms. In the background, Master Bo noted that Brock seemed to be learning how to expel the excess chi with each breath as well. He would not lose any of them. Good. They were passing through months of instruction in hours. They would be passing through decades of instruction within months. This was necessary, the demons were progressing farther every day. In months, he would be sending them out to face the darkness. They would either be the weapons he wielded to save humanity, or simply the last precious resource expended in a cause lost because the strong felt it beneath them.

Grandmaster Bo cultivated patience. He had not instructed nascent cultivators in centuries, and he must remind himself not to expect the knowledge of the masters that were the lowest he had instructed in his living memory. He must not punish them for their ignorance, nor for his desperation, for as much as ne needed to be patient, he, and the world, were running out of time.

Meanwhile, in the grave of the Ten Thousand Stalwarts where a demon summoning had gone sideways, I was having a far different introduction to the wonders of cultivation than the students who had been summoned.

In front of me was a portly middle aged Asian woman, whose manner was that of the witches I knew. I was a Heathen, which meant I worshipped the gods of the old Germanic and Scandinavian people that made up much of my ancestry. I had always fancied myself Odin’s man and had followed his path and his teachings throughout my military career. Honestly, his wisdom allowed me to be sane and functional in a profession that lost as many people to addiction and other forms of self harm picked up as coping mechanisms for dealing with memories that our culture insisted belonged only in fiction and should only be seen through a video game screen or movie screen, where the screams are artistic and none of the victims are children or elderly. I had picked up more of the esoteric traditions of the ancient faith when I had to deal with chronic pain and to deal with grief, but I had always shied away from anything that smacked of witchcraft. Witch was a profession not a religion. Call them wise women, call them seers, call them witches, they were the women who didn’t just open themselves up to the divine they actively went about and used it to do things. They talked to the spirits of the lands and waters about, which I admit I learned to do as well, mostly to find something like peace when my own emotions were a bag of shite, but the witches went so far as to ask the spirits for things, and offer them things in return. I was dead set against that for reasons having to do with pride. I mean, on one level I told myself it wasn’t real, and yet the pragmatist in me said the stuff that I used that worked came from the same place, so maybe it wasn’t all bunk. On the other hand, the idea of using something other than my own strength, my own will, my own skill, seemed like a cop out and I was dead set against it. I mean, cool for the witches who did it, but it was totally not anything I wanted to learn about.

Except now, I am pretty sure that ignorance was killing me. I wasn’t like those kids who had been summoned. I was a dead man. Not all the way dead, but not all the way alive. I had to die to take my place here, and I didn’t come alone. When you are alive, your soul has many parts. Part is born in your flesh, and is the anchor to you. Part attaches to you that comes from your ancestors, that binds you to your wyrd, your fate, it connects you to all that went before and will come after. Part grows from your choices, your experiences, your actions, your relationships. Your soul is not a single piece, it is like an arch built from many stones all leaning upon each other and together able to bear the weight of all the nine worlds.

There is a slight problem, in order to keep Christina and Tsien from being caught up in this stupid summoning I had to sacrifice myself on the tree, I had to die, to shatter that bit of my soul that bound me to my flesh to take the place of Christina. I could not do it alone, so I called upon and was answered by the tiniest fraction of my god. Odin, the tree hanger, god of war, of poetry, of inspiration and rage. The god of I AM NOT GOING TO FUCKING TELL YOU HOW I AM DOING IT, figure it out or die. When we hit the summoning, we were more than one, and less than two, and thus forced Christina and Tsien both out. That was probably good, if I saved her and sacrificed she would be cursing me for an eternity. That being said, I was dying in order to do so. Odin was propping me up, but he could be channelled by the living and I was busy dying.

That is when the demon tried to cast his net for us, and sent his demons to infect, corrupt, and possess the ten strongest of the summoning. Odin, being Odin, promptly grabbed the first one, dragged it into a dark part of my soul and began doing something terribly distressing to it without bothering to explain. Whatever he was doing was making him stronger and keeping me from coming completely apart, so without really understanding, I “ate” the other nine. It stopped my coming apart long enough to arrive in this world and actually form a physical body. I mean a shell. It wasn’t actually a body. I moved it, and it seemed to work like a body but it was really more of a meat puppet. It didn’t hurt. Hell, it didn’t even breathe, but it did what I said.

I was trapped inside it, with nine demons. I was in control of the body, but my spirit was growing weaker by the second. Not a lot. Kind of like a kids aquarium in a sunny window. I wasn’t losing a lot of water, but within a week, you would notice the water dropping. In two, your fish was in trouble. There was a world full of energy out there. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t touch it, but I could feel it when we came into this world. I was like a sailor in the middle of the ocean. Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Plus, the demons trapped inside me were not strong enough to take over, yet, but with every moment, there was less of me and at some point, there would be more of them. Then I was going to be a meat puppet still, but I would be their meat puppet, and they had very specific urges. Those urges were the problem with the witch in front of me.

“Hello, I seem to be in need of a good witch, and you totally smell like one.” Wow, that came out fully twice as creepy as I intended, and my smile wasn’t helping. The nudity, my size, hairiness, and the whole, just shattered chains and chased off a demon lord thing wasn’t helping.

“I will not talk with you demon. You are going to kill and eat all of us.” She said firmly, the hundred people behind her were busy cowering and weeping, so it seemed to be that not only the demon who just fled, but the villagers who were left totally agreed that this was how it was going down. The demons inside me were screaming and howling to kill and eat, to rend their souls and consume them. Nine were. One was whimpering in the back in pain as Odin crooned something to it. I had no idea what my god was doing, but the demon wasn’t liking it, and Odin seemed perfectly content to let me sink or swim on my own. Honestly, my god was not without his asshole moments.

I turned to the witch in front of me and decided that I needed to do some of that “hearts and minds” stuff that we got trained on. Network with the locals, bond, establish trust and open a dialogue. You know, con them.

“Call that plan A, I kill and eat you like I killed and ate nine of the ten demons that boss demon planned on putting in the heroes summoned from my world. They were supposed to eat you, but I ate them instead. Problem is, I am having a little digestive issue with them, and if I don’t get a little help then we might get to the kill and eat you point. I have something I like to call plan B, and it’s a little crazy, and needs your help.” I smiled sweetly.

“Why should I help you? You admit to having nine demons inside you. Cultivators taken by demons are worse than mortals. They have terrible powers and hungers beyond that of normal demons. Helping you would be becoming part of that harm.” She asked.

“Remember plan A is me killing and eating you and all your little villager friends, and then going off in the countryside to do nasty demonly things, so that would be your reason to help me. Now, why don’t we start with something simple. I take it you are this villages witch? What is your name? I swear, that I will not lie to you if you tell me the truth.” I said, because two things were really big in heathenry, the concept of reciprocity, a gift for a gift, an eye for an eye. Balance was critical in all relationships. The second important thing was hospitality. Now the Demon Sui who summoned me clearly gathered the locals to be my initial food. That made these local people my hosts. That made me their guest. It was bad to offer harm to a host that was fulfilling their duties. It was also equally bad for a host to not be welcoming. Reciprocity was a thing.

She blinked, sighed, and bowed deeply. “I am Soo Ling Laing, wise woman and elder of this village. I will claim skill as an apothecary and healer, but I am a village wise woman, a spirit speaker who has chosen mortality, and not an esteemed cultivator like yourself who walks the path to godhood.” She said with dignity I could not muster on my best day.

I bowed deeply in return, noting my back didn’t hurt. How strange. It was of course not my actual back, or not my former back. This alone made the world magical. The cultivator thing caught my attention. So, like traditional Chinese mysticism. I encountered Eastern Mysticism as part of my martial arts training. I took bits that worked similar enough to what my own faith taught, but honestly outside of the cultural context it all sounded like gobbledygook. Nothing against those traditions, but teaching them to outsiders who didn’t have the culture robbed them of their power and much of their utility. Fish can only teach swimming in water. On land, its just flopping around.

So, I ignored my own cultures witchcraft, and now my survival required me to relearn it using the tools of another cultures witchcraft before demons ate my soul and turned me into a problem. No pressure.

“Soo Ling Laing, you may call me Bolverk. I did not seek out these demons save as prey. I have given my whole life to stand between people like yourself and danger. I am not from this world, and lack the tools and training to understand its ways. I will shortly become the thing you fear if I do not get your help in a little ritual from my world.” I asked her filling my voice with all the sincerity in the nine worlds.

She looked at me with alarm. “What is this little ritual. I do not know of any magics to tame nine demons, I do not know how one who claims to not know any magic may bind demons with my help.”

I was going to have to walk her through this. Honestly, the ritual itself was good magical practice, I mean mostly it was a symbolic thing, but the old man, he took symbolism a little far. The best symbol for a spear was in the end, an actual spear. The best symbol of a sacrifice was, well, something I would have to bring Soo Ling Laing along slowly to embrace.

I walked her outside the tomb, to the largest tree in the area. It seemed to loom and dominate the grove, and I saw her bow and whisper to it in a way that reassured me it was as potent a thing as I thought it was. I grinned. That would help.

“You see, I need you to hang me from this tree, and then stick me in the gut with a spear.” I said slowly explaining Odin’s sacrifice on the world tree, how he hung nine nights sacrificed himself to himself to learn from the world tree the power of runes, the master of magic to become the Father of Magical Songs, as well as the God of the Hanged. She looked at me with the sort of horror that you would expect from a nun being asked to edit a porn movie. As she opened her mouth to make any number of utterly logical objections, I cut her short.

“Soo Ling Laing, I am not a cultivator. I can feel the chi, as you call it in the air of this world. It burns against my skin, but I can’t see it. I can’t take it in, I can’t do anything with it. I know if I can, I can bind these demons and become strong enough to help defend against them, but if I don’t do it soon, they will end up eating me. You do remember there were ten benches in that chamber, ten heroes supposed to be fed to the demons. You never asked me what happened to the tenth demon, or why I don’t have to worry about it.” I asked her.

She stopped, and her eyes began to widen.

“I brought the tiniest shard of my god with me when I came, and that tiny shard ate the tenth demon. Even now I can here my god singing in the back of my mind, and hear the demon’s cries growing weaker and weaker. He will not tell me how to bind or tame the demons inside me, which means he thinks he has already taught me enough. This is literally my only idea.” I said smiling as if this explained everything neatly.

“That is stupid!” Soo Ling Laing pointed out angrily.

“Plan A is eat everyone, devour the world in screaming darkness. Plan B is just hang this idiot in a tree and stick him with a spear. If I am right, I have tamed demons and you have a defender for humanity. If I am about to become a demon, then I will be hung from a tree and nailed to it with a spear, which gives you a far better chance of running away when I start going with plan A again.” I smiled, spreading my hands wide like a used car salesman at his cheesiest. I mean, it was a lot to ask, but this was the only idea we had, the ugliest car on the lot is still better than no car at all, at least potentially.

I stood on two leaning coffin lids balanced in opposition, with a noose tied around my neck from a thick branch of the tree. She stood in front of me with a spear, and three stout men behind her. She looked at me as I balanced on the coffin lids making an unstable A frame beneath me. She had them bind my hands behind me once I was tottering on top, so I don’t try anything when they hand and stick me. I couldn’t really object, but having shattered iron manacles, I was unsure how the hemp rope would fare. Whatever made them happy.

The old woman looked at me and then furrowed her brow. “That name you gave, it wasn’t your real name. It tasted like a title. Bolverk. What does it mean?” Soo Ling Laing asked.

I grinned. “It means, Evil Worker” Then I kicked away the coffin lids, and felt the noose catch my neck as I fell, breaking it. Soo Ling Laing and her three stout helpers drove the spear not just into me, but through me and into the tree behind, pinning me like a butterfly to a display cork board.

I couldn’t scream, but the demons inside me could.

I didn’t see the witch or her peasants flee, because I was sinking into a world of pain.

I remembered my first initiation, I remembered my first trance work where I learned to take my spirit out of my body, I remembered my lessons in learning how to use my pain to fuel the power required to master it, and command a body that should have been too broken to do my will, but would do so anyway. I had walked my path a long time, with nothing but the teachings of Odin to guide me. I wasn’t a good student, I was a warrior not a scholar, but I was a craftsman at war. I learned everything about it, which lead me to studying history, which lead me to studying philosophy, which lead me to study poetry, which lead me to studying art. Studying war began with the study of weapons, logistics, and tactics, but that is how you lost wars. In the end, war was a tool for breaking an enemy’s ability to resist. To win war, you must change your enemy’s mind. To know his mind, you must know his motivations, to know his motivations you must understand his thoughts. To understand his thoughts, you must understand his dreams, to understand his dreams, you must understand his feelings. Odin can be a right bastard, in trying to become a better weapon, he had lead me into the trap of learning to feel the feelings of others. Sure it began as a weapon, as a tool, but it is a tool that shapes the wielder. It got me off a lot of destructive paths I had gotten too comfortable with. It made me realize how damaging I had been to my first two wives, and oddly, cost me my third when it made me stop hurting her, which made the foundation of our relationship crumble. It wasn’t so much making me a better person as much as it was making me see the results of my choices, then leaving me free to continue doing as much harm to friend as foe, or choose to find better ways of those who I claimed to care for.

It sounds like a strange set of thoughts to have while hanging from a broken neck, a spear driven through my guts, tearing the wound wider as I kicked and flailed, but so I hung, and so I thought, and so I remembered.

I remembered my journey becoming a soldier. Basic training, a young idiot who let no one in, who was a lone wolf and proud of it. No lone wolves survive basic. The strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. You either, as they say, hang together, or you will hang separately. Learning that a soldier was not anything alone, that you were strong together, that you needed all kinds of strengths that different people brought to the team to be successful. We trained to standards, frequently irrelevant or stupid standards, but in the field, and most definitely in war, you came to rely on all the different gifts everyone brought. You went to war with the people you had, not the people you wanted, and those that learned to draw the most out of those around them got to live, and the people that couldn’t change, couldn’t leave behind training norms, and plans that should have worked died, usually while getting others killed.

I remembered coming home and realizing I couldn’t actually talk to anyone. We lived in two different worlds. The gap between my world and theirs was too much. My family tried, and I tried. My wives tried more than any, but I got used to deciding they didn’t have to understand. Then Christina was born. Somehow she got past my defenses. I could talk to her, or rather she would talk to me. Sharing everything, so I did the same. A gift for a gift, she held nothing back, so neither did I. She accepted without judgement, so did I. She looked upon all the things I held inside and accepted them, then took me by the hand to see the penguins. All the darkness of the world accepted, but also, penguins. Joy, a simple acceptance of darkness, and the simple response of seeking and embracing the matching light.

I stopped kicking. Stopped resisting.

I held demons inside me. Why was I worried? I had far uglier things inside me that were all mine. They had hungers, rage, hatred. So did I, but I had more. I was more. I wasn’t a warrior, I was a soldier. A soldier stood between his people and harm. I was a sheep dog, I stood between the flock and the wolves and if the wolves came, they were nothing but meat before me. If the world was full of demons and darkness, then the world was also full of laughter and life. There was nothing to learn from turning away from the world, from shutting yourself off from connection, from caring. Not feeling pain made you a leper not a superman. Feeling pain was important, it reminded you there were limits, there were costs. Feeling pleasure, feeling joy, feeling hunger, feeling satisfaction, feeling wonder; these were all part of the reason souls were given flesh. Sure there was blood and pain and shit, aches and weakness, but without those there could not be any of the other experiences like feeling your baby niece close her whole hand around one of your fingers, you could never stare into a lover’s eyes and see that moment where both of your defenses dropped and you looked into each others soul to know and accept each other.

My eyes flew open, I had no idea how many days I had hung, but the blood flaked on my nakedness as I reached down and pulled the spear out of me.

Blood poured from the wound, and the rope around my neck grew taut. With the spear, I flailed blindly above me until the head cut the rope and I fell.

Pulling my head upright, I drew in a breath and I felt something scream inside me. I felt a demon being bound to my throat, to my neck and spine, I felt something torn away from him as I felt myself grow a little more rooted in this body. The break in my neck from hanging was healed with demon flesh, as part of him tore away to become me. One of the nine demons was broken, his power doomed to slowly become mine, his will gradually eroding, doomed to become mine. I felt as if I gate had been open inside me, and a hunger that had been growing called to me. I clawed the noose from my throat, seeing the scar on my neck from the hanging, but somehow ordering myself to not heal it. This scar I would bear. This was important. A gift for a gift, a price paid for all things.

I drew in a breath, and with it came a power, was this chi? This was the breath of the world, but with it was so much more. A connection, a feeling, a part of something larger. An echo of a song, a glimpse of a structure, a whisper of a truth.

I drew the breath into my belly, where the gaping spear wound was and while the breath stayed in my lungs, the power sank deeper into the wound in my belly and began to pool. The demon in my belly began to burn. With each breath I drew more of this chi into me, and I pulled it from my lungs into my belly. It began to pool, to collect, to concentrate. The demon screamed as bits of him were torn away, becoming bits of me. I reached through him to the chi that was burning him as it passed into me. I breathed it in, I pulled it inside me, I somehow mixed it with my soul. Refining it, making it resonate with me. As I did so, I began to resonate with the chi outside, itself moving as if from some sort of external current. As if there was some sort of grand order to the whole universe that it was all responding to.

I opened my eyes in wonder, to see, a dragon.

This was a strange dragon. Huge like an elephant, but lower, longer. It had great horns like an ox but was hairy like a bison. Long like a serpent, it had legs jointed like a Komodo dragon with claws that shone as crystal obsidian. Long mustaches like a catfish drooped from a snout that would have shamed a Tyrannosaur, and teeth easily the equal to swords showed in the mouth as its lips drew back in a smile. Eyes each the size of dinner plates were open only slightly to reveal vertical slit pupils in pools of liquid gold that shone with all the wisdom in the world.

“I am Jiaolongma, earth dragon, and you should not exist.”

Her voice, for it could only be a her, did not ring in the earth so much as it sang in the bones of the world, as it sang in my bones. When she spoke, the whole of the world wove its song between her notes as if all of the world was reordered by her mere notice of it.

Being renowned my entire life for saying just the right thing to get off on the wrong foot with women, I proved that this trend extended to dragons, as the truth came out of me before I could think.

“Well, you aren’t wrong.”