Pain was an old acquaintance, not known well enough or long enough to be called a friend. But he knew it; knew it like a guest at a family dinner every forth night. It was always there in the consequences of his failed daily quest. In a place where he had once lost an arm and a leg. It was also the companion of every soul mage.

Seth sat in the mist, back against a rough tree. His breathing was rapid and he knew it was not because of his breathing technique. He was tired, and bleeding, and parts of his body were growing stiff. The latter he attributed to the constant poisoning. Just where had eight king spiders come from? The little the seminary taught them of soul beasts and reia beast taught nothing of them. These were creatures of his consequences. That they were here in his waking world was nothing short of a terror.

He exhaled tiredly, consciously forcing his breaths to composure.

He had been lucky this time. Eight king spiders were no joke but it could’ve been worse. Each time he had fought them in his consequences they had come in packs of greater numbers than this.

Again, he breathed out, exhaled then inhaled deeper. He felt his reia channels with each breath, reaching every part of him, and smiled.

The fight had lasted too long, and it had been terrifying, tiring. But it had also been exhilarating. The rush of power that came with it was something he’d never felt before. It was like a terrifying high. It left him feeling invincible, like nothing could hurt him. The fight had proved it wrong, though.

But why hadn’t he felt it before? This was not the first time he’d used his skills. In fact, he could argue he used his skills significantly more than all his brothers combined. So why now? Even his daily quest had changed, adjusting its requirements so that thousands of draws became fifteen quick draws and thousands of steps became ten quick steps. Still, he’d never felt the rush.

Is this because I used it in combat?

Now that there was no threat of violence he released his hold on the sword, resting it on the floor beside him. No sooner had his hand left it did his minds begin their bickering.

We swear we hate that weapon.

We’d hoped we’d never see it again. How is it here?

As thankful as we are for it, can we toss it away now? We don’t need it anymore.

Seth let their bickering drown him at first, waiting for anything useful; some piece of information they had gleaned in their silence. Finding none, he ignored them.

He stared down at where he’d dropped the sword but did not see it, the mist still too thick even now. But he knew it was there, just as he knew the sky was blue during the day.

His minds’ bickering had taught him nothing he did not already know. It might have taken him a while but he’d eventually recognized the sword after a few slashes and cuts. The weight of it had been more than familiar the longer he fought on. The way it hissed through the air with every draw.

At first he’d thought the familiarity was simply born of his use of countless swords, especially during the winter test, then time had proven different. It was his hated tachi. The one Jabari had forced upon him during their travels.

Still, his smile never left his lips. He had used it for hours, fighting spiders he had no reason to fight in the waking world. And it had been a significant while before its weight began to tell on him. another while before unsheathing it became too laborious. But most notably was that it was more comfortable to use than he remembered: its length not too long, its size not too large. It was proof he was growing. Short as he was, he was at least taller than he had once been. Though nothing of its weight had changed. If anything, it seemed heavier.

We understand our obsession with our height, one of his minds pointed out, but don’t forget it also proves we’re also more powerful.

“That, too,” he agreed. “It’s not like I forgot.”

He sat there a while longer, catching his breath. His reia channels felt sore from overuse and he let those rest as well. As euphoric as using them had felt, there were obvious side effects, especially now that he’d run out of reia.

“How do we know we’re out of reia?” he asked his minds, curious. He didn’t seem as fatigued as his brothers always looked whenever they’d used their skills too many times.

That’s easy, one answered. We’re empty.

“True,” he nodded. “But how do I know that?”

Because your skills got weaker towards the end, another answered. And now there’s nothing left to use even if you try. You see that emptiness you feel in your belly; as if you’re full but you know your stomach is empty?

“Yes.”

You fill that way because your stomach is full but your core is empty.

“I thought we aren’t supposed to be able to envision our cores until we hit Iron?” he asked, confused.

We aren’t.

“But you can see it.”

We can.

Seth frowned. “Then why can’t I?”

No idea. Wanna know what it looks like?

Seth took a moment to think about it. There was no one in his group who hadn’t tried to visualize their core. Even Timi had done so. The one thing they all had in common was their inability to complete the task. True to Ivan’s words, they lacked the capability.

“No,” he answered, finally. Something told him it would serve to only discourage him.

Time went on and they lulled back into silence, his laboring breaths the only sound filling it. He rested, and strength came to him in trickles. But with each strength that came, his body stiffened more until his breathing, though under his control, became harder. In time, it felt the way it had when he’d just begun learning the technique, like sucking up gallons of mud through his nostrils. Uncomfortable was an understatement in its description.

Coupled with his stiffening muscles, he was beginning to suffer.

Then someone occupied the space beside him, where he’d dropped his sword, and grit his teeth. He would’ve sighed were his breathing not already a lesson in torture. But with the sweat running down his face, his injuries bleeding, and his muscles beginning to constrict, he still spoke, said the words he’d dreaded since the moment he’d picked up the sword.

“Hello, Jabari.”

Silence followed for the briefest moment, long enough for him to be wrong, before someone replied.

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“Hello, Struggler.”

The man’s voice was as soft and deep as he remembered. He carried the voice of a loving father capable of leading thousands of men into bloody war. A mild gentility with an undertone of violence. It was the voice of a man comfortable, almost dismissive, in his own power.

Seth smiled lazily. “Who’s struggling?” he asked, jestingly. “I’m not struggling. If you’re talking about these spiders, I’ll have you know they were a walk in the park. Didn’t even have to break a sweat.”

Beside him Jabari nodded. Then he clapped.

The sound was louder than the banging of thunder in a stormy sky. Seth winced from it, closing his eyes against the pain. When he opened them, the mist was gone.

He sat against one tree in a sea of trees. Scattered around him were so many trees he was confused how he’d fought for so long without running into any of them. Beside him Jabari stood clad in his night sky cassock simply looking down at him with eyes the same color as his. But his bore a depth to them, an age Seth was certain was absent in his own.

“Is this how you walk in your parks?” Jabari asked him with the barest acknowledgement of his humor.

Seth looked down at himself and any retort he’d had to give, any witty remark, fled his mind. He was battered and bruised, his body beaten horrible so that he spotted more colors than any man should. His cassock was torn in too many places so that it revealed more of him than it hid. Thus, his torso was almost completely bare. It allowed him spot the purple bruises that littered it. The cuts and lacerations. They scared him to silence.

The injuries he’d thought bled profusely did not seem so profuse now that he looked at them. But what was terrifying about them was the state of the blood, they looked highly viscous, like syrup, pooling very slowly from each wound.

“It’s the poison,” Jabari said, as if reading his mind.

Seth nodded absently. “Oh.” That much made sense, He turned his head to look up at the priest and gasped in pain from the action. “But you’re going to take care of that, aren’t you?”

He had intended the words to come out as a question but they came out as a matter of fact. He might as well have been telling the man he was bleeding.

Jabari simply cocked his head to the side in thought. After the space of a breath, he squatted beside Seth, the action slow and purposeful.

Seth gave up looking at the man and only then did he see the carnage he’d wrought around him. There were spider legs broken and cut up littering the ground. Spider intestines covered in green goo dangled from leafless branches. There were broken carapace he did not remember having ever broken littering the floor and staining the ground, leaving some spider backs bare, revealing a mushy interior of stuffed intestines and parts that reminded him of what the human brain looked like in drawings he’d seen over the years.

Wow, one of his minds thought, amazed. We survived that?

We can’t really say we did, can we? Another disagreed softly. We’re still here, bleeding out, being choked alive by our own muscles.

But Jabari is here.

And? Another asked with a touch of sarcasm. Who said he was going to help?

“Be quiet,” Seth rebuked, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re all too loud. It’s giving me a headache.”

Squatted beside him, Jabari looked at him momentarily, silencing him, before returning his gaze to his body. Something about the way the man did it seemed superficial, fake. It was as if the man wasn’t really looking at anything, simply going through the motions, performing actions simply because they were expected of him.

Seth addressed nothing of the subject, and after a while the priest stood back up.

“Your body’s already working on it.”

“Impossible,” Seth breathed out. He could barely even hear himself now.

“I have yet to meet a thing truly impossible, child. That said,” Jabari panned his gaze to the side, away from Seth as if watching something. “While your body is dealing with the poison, it is doing so very slowly. There is little hope of you surviving at this rate. Still, it will be good for you to let your body work.”

“I might be souled but those were reia beasts. There’s no way I have a healing factor strong enough to save me.” Some of his blood looked more green than red now. They had also stopped flowing. “I won’t make it at this rate.”

“Why did you protect your head at all costs?” Jabari asked suddenly, he didn’t even look like he cared for his own question. “You have injuries almost everywhere. But not your head. It doesn’t even have the barest scratch. Why?”

Seth tried to shrug on reflex and failed. His body had stopped answering him now. He could feel himself shutting down. “I don’t know… Head injuries are harder to heal?”

Jabari waited thoughtfully, then made a noncommittal grunt that could’ve meant anything. Still, he remained silent. Only after another while, as Seth’s eyelids grew heavier and began falling, did he speak again.

“You’ve been souled for a while now, longer than most of your mates—”

“And whose fault is that?” Seth mumbled.

“—but you were not yet soulbound,” he continued, as if never having been interrupted. Then, gently, he lowered himself to the floor and sat beside Seth, leaned his back against the same tree. “Then you went for your test of the mist and unlocked your first skill, triggering your own soul.” He shrugged. “That was not enough to awaken it fully so it was not an issue. Then you had your winter test and did the stupid thing of eating meat from a reia beast.”

“Soul magi eat it all the time,” Seth objected, his voice quiet.

“True. But that’s from Gold and climbing. And the last time we checked, you were no Gold then, and no Gold now. But we could say that was good for you.”

“Why?”

“Because after that you went ahead and fought against a Guda snake. One of Iron rank for that matter.”

Seth made a sound that could’ve been a chuckle. “You’re forgetting the important part.”

“And what’s that?”

He smirked. “I won.”

“That you did,” Jabari agreed. “And pumped yourself full of enough poison to kill an elephant while you were at it. But, as I said, that was good for you. Do you know why soul magi eat meat from reia beasts? It’s because it speeds up reia circulation, enhancing their cultivation. It pumps them full of so much reia their cores are forced to work harder than normal to refine it. Without intervention, it’s enough to crack their core, even shatter it. So when they eat it, they must cycle, grind away at their own core so that it doesn’t process too fast and too hard. It’s a delicate thing cycling in that manner. Especially when the meat is not cooked properly.”

“W…what’s… cycling?”

“A method of cultivation that involves a lot of breathing,” he answered dismissively. “You’ll learn it as you grow. And before you say you didn’t cycle or anything like that, you already do. You’ve been cycling long before you were ever even souled.”

“The b…breath…ing tech…nique.” Staying awake was becoming too hard. Seth wanted the embrace of sleep, his pain was choking him.

“Yes, your breathing technique. So the reia was channeled into your core, the miniscule you had, instead of going straight to your heart and destroying it. Luckily you only took enough to keep you constantly filled and it was only meat not yet of Iron rank. So you had reia constantly forcing your core and growing it. But since you had no reia channels, once it grew too large it started spilling into your blood and the rest of you…”

“… poisoning me.”

“Poisoning you. So you were filled with energy for days, but you were over working yourself. You were dying. Then you went after the Guda Snake and fought above your means, giving more than a hundred percent of what you were meant to be capable of, unlocking three more skills in the process. That, dear boy, is how you, barely souled, managed to win against an Iron rank reia beast.” He turned and checked up on Seth, nodded once, and returned to staring at nothing. “Yes. You’re definitely still dying. Regardless, do you know one of the beautiful characteristics of the Guda Snake? It’s how poisonous it is. It’s one of the few creatures that are more poisonous than they are venomous. Even the king spider is venomous not poisonous, expelling its venom as projectiles, spittle, instead of injecting it.”

“So th… that thing… spat… on me.”

“Those things,” he corrected. “Plural. More than one. And yes, they did. But I digress. The reason you survived the winter test is because while you were constantly poisoning yourself, you allowed the Guda Snake poison you as well. And its poison slows down the body’s function in a soul mage. It makes the blood thicker, heavier, slowing its flow, and does the same to the mage’s reia. In time, the mage’s heart gets clogged and can’t pump out enough blood simply because it doesn’t have enough force to pump out blood so thick and heavy. The core follows after as the reia takes on similar properties, becoming too full and thick, too heavy to cycle. The next thing you know, you have a soul mage who can’t circulate blood or reia. Then they die.”

“I… lived. And why… are… y…you talk… ing so…. Much?”

“Yes, you lived. The reason? Because while your core was going on over drive, poisoning your blood and sending your heart on equal over drive, the Guda snake’s poison helped. It thickened both your blood and the reia in your core. So your heart was pumping many times faster but your blood was many times heavier, balancing it out. The same for your core. It was cycling many times faster but your reia was many times denser.” He raised a hand as if reaching for something. “They somehow managed to reach an equilibrium. The good news, you survived.” Then his countenance darkened, his calm exterior grew cold. “The bad news. You’ve filled your body with reia, corrupted and external, too many years too early. So now I have to start afresh in flushing all of it out of your system.”

He rose to his feet and came to stand in front of Seth. “I very much do not like having my work undone.”

Then Seth fainted.