Some parts of what Sobon had to teach, she preferred to teach all three of them at once, and so she wait­ed un­til evening, when Lui was done with her work. Al­though Sobon was tempt­ed to spend the time on an­oth­er pro­ject, Ki'el and Mian both had stum­bling blocks on their im­me­di­ate tasks that re­quired her at­ten­tion. None of them were crit­i­cal, just... dif­fi­cul­ties.

Af­ter din­ner, though, Sobon gath­ered the three of them, Lui bright eyed de­spite hav­ing tired her­self out at work. The girl's ex­pres­sions were nev­er quite the same, now, but that naivety had also been mask­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion, a need to ac­com­plish things. Sobon re­mind­ed her­self to talk with the girl more fre­quent­ly, and make sure that the oth­ers did too, but that was not for this mo­ment.

"I don't know how the peo­ple of this world view it," Sobon said, "but since they--some of them--seem to be able to be­come tru­ly spir­i­tu­al­ly strong, they can't be far from the truth. But... here are the fun­da­men­tals to be­com­ing a pow­er­ful aether or qi war­rior."

"First is awak­en­ing, when peo­ple who have the tal­ent learn to ma­nip­u­late what you would call in­ter­nal qi, and con­nect soul to spir­it. Mian is still in this phase, and some who have ac­cess to aether or qi nev­er leave it. Dur­ing this phase, very lit­tle of use is re­al­ly gained. At the be­gin­ning of Sil­ver Qi, on this plan­et, you have what is ap­par­ent­ly the first of sev­er­al... cleans­ings, in which your qi core will re­forge your body. That's... not a na­tive func­tion of aether, but it helps."

"At the start of Gold Qi, your soul con­nects to what Alas­si and Ki'el have told me is called your dant­ian. This... works dif­fer­ent­ly for me, be­cause I am not pre­cise­ly the soul of my body. The dant­ian is meant to hold qi in a way that your core strug­gles to be­fore that, and it is the point at which ex­ter­nal qi be­comes more use­ful as a skill. How­ev­er, ex­ter­nal qi is not the path for­wards to ad­vance­ment."

"The phase that starts at Gold Qi and ex­tends for a long time af­ter that is what we call acclimatization, and it builds the foun­da­tion for your spir­i­tu­al abil­i­ties. You must un­der­stand..." Sobon paused, and sighed. "Aether is pow­er­ful, but it is also dan­ger­ous, in many ways. You can make mis­takes with your in­tent, and they can... de­stroy you." Sobon looked at Ki'el, who had a pained ex­pres­sion on her face. "But also, aether... aether and qi can be ei­ther at­tuned, or not at­tuned. At­tuned aether does not re­spond to the will of an­oth­er, but un­at­tuned aether can be­come at­tuned to any liv­ing thing, even plants and fun­gus. And... un­at­tuned aether can at­tach to small parts of your body. If this hap­pens, the body's in­nate self­ish­ness can be am­pli­fied by aether, and it can de­cide to grow and change on its own, against your will. This is called mu­ta­tion, and it is a dead­ly thing. The worst ex­am­ples of it can­not be cured even by the med­i­cine of my peo­ple. At best, it can be vi­o­lent­ly re­moved, and new body parts grown in place."

"In­nate self­ish­ness?" asked Lui, with a look on her face like she had half-un­der­stood what Sobon was say­ing, where Ki'el and Mian most­ly didn't at all.

"I am sure that Lady Fau is teach­ing you, Lui, that the body is made of parts and pieces. All liv­ing things are, and the small­est pieces are too small to see. They build up into larg­er tis­sues, and tis­sues form into or­gans, and the or­gans work to­geth­er to form the body. But you must un­der­stand that the small­est pieces, and es­pe­cial­ly the tis­sues, can still be con­sid­ered sep­a­rate from the whole, form a cer­tain point of view. Nor­mal­ly, this doesn't mat­ter; even if they ob­ject to their cir­cum­stances--even if you don't use a mus­cle un­til it wastes away, for ex­am­ple--they have no way to con­trol their cir­cum­stances, and can only trust the body, and you as the soul, and do what they were al­ways meant to do. They fol­low rules, be­cause they have no oth­er op­tions."

"But aether gives them op­tions. Whether your mus­cles have a grudge for not be­ing used prop­er­ly, or whether your skin is tired of too much sun, or even if you mere­ly feel hun­gry or tired, a cell or tis­sue or or­gan that de­sires to change its cir­cum­stances can. This means that it no longer fol­lows the rules of the body; it rebels, and it has the pow­er to do so suc­cess­ful­ly. But these are not in­tel­li­gent, not even as in­tel­li­gent as beasts. They only know them­selves and their de­sires, be­com­ing a mon­ster that grows from with­in your body it­self."

All three of them looked dis­tressed at the con­cept, and Sobon lift­ed a hand in a paci­fy­ing ges­ture.

"This doesn't hap­pen of­ten, even in this world, I think. But all this ex­plains why the ac­clima­ti­za­tion is nec­es­sary. Be­cause while the awak­en­ing con­nects your soul to the spir­it of your body, you must soak the tis­sues and or­gans of your body in aether that re­sponds to your will and not theirs, so that they grow used to the ex­is­tence of aether but know that they can­not reach it. Even when you start chan­nel­ing large amounts of aether through your body, it is not... con­fused."

"But this is not fin­ished the first time you do it. As you use more com­plex and more pow­er­ful aether, it is more and more com­mon that your con­trol slips, and aether--even aether at­tuned to you--be­comes loose in your body. If it is too pow­er­ful, your spir­it will try to con­trol that aether on its own, for its own safe­ty. And be­cause your body's spir­it and your soul are linked, it may suc­ceed even when the aether is attuned to you. When your tissues and organs have access to attuned aether, either they continue to follow the rules of the body, and you are fine, or it starts to rebel, and there is a chance your body will be­come self­ish and mu­tate into a mon­ster. To avoid this, as you be­come stronger, you must re­forge your body again and again."

"But there is a lim­it." Sobon frowned. "My peo­ple use aether so pow­er­ful that even if it were at­tuned, it could not be chan­neled through a liv­ing body. Past a cer­tain point, if you want to use pow­er in a body, or if you sim­ply wish to sur­vive in a place where there is enough nat­ur­al aether in the air around you, you must cre­ate ar­ti­fi­cial tis­sues and or­gans, re­mov­ing all weak­ness and pro­duc­ing some­thing that is not alive, but ful­fills the func­tions of liv­ing flesh and bone. I do not know where the peo­ple of this world draw that line, but I can tell you that Star­beast cores, and I as­sume oth­er qi beast cores, are an ex­am­ple of this."

"At that lev­el of pow­er, once a person has replaced their whole body with an artificial version that tolerates the highest levels of aether, then a per­son becomes tru­ly dan­ger­ous. It would take some­one of that lev­el of strength to have tak­en down the... the ship of the Mas­ter's As­sis­tants, the ones who are stuck on this world. That ship had de­fens­es so pow­er­ful that no nor­mal qi user could pierce them. A per­son at that pow­er lev­el could not safe­ly fight in a city with­out de­stroy­ing it, not at their full strength."

"So the Di­a­mond Lord must be at that lev­el?" Mian's ex­pres­sion was some com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ed, but also a lit­tle queasy. The oth­er two both showed more dis­com­fort with the idea of that lev­el of pow­er, with­out any in­ter­est.

"I would imag­ine, though I've nev­er seen him." Sobon sighed. "In the­o­ry, there is a step be­yond even that, but it is not im­por­tant. A be­ing that tran­scends hav­ing a body can only live with­in pure aether, and pure aether ex­ists be­yond this world, in vast strings that con­nect the stars."

"Those are the gods?" Ki'el asked, her voice more cu­ri­ous than in­ter­est­ed.

"No." Sobon shook her head. "Or rather, not ex­act­ly. It may be pos­si­ble for aether be­ings to reach down into a world, but they would have no rea­son to. Spir­i­tu­al gods are sim­ply the most pow­er­ful class of aether spir­its that can ex­ist in a world. Aether spir­its... are very dif­fer­ent from liv­ing bod­ies, though they of­ten are born from the a body's spir­it upon death. An aether spir­it still con­tains much of what we rec­og­nize as liv­ing will, where the process to as­cend into a true aether be­ing... which, to cre­ate a term for you, I will call a ti­tan, that in­volves strip­ping away every­thing but the soul it­self. An aether spir­it lives in har­mo­ny with what they once were, but a ti­tan must ei­ther con­sume, dom­i­nate, or de­stroy every­thing that is not its pure self."

"Your peo­ple have met these en­ti­ties?" Ki'el seemed... a lit­tle in­trigued?

Sobon shrugged. "The vast strings of aether are also used by some of us, out there, for trav­el­ling be­tween the stars. They com­mu­ni­cate, some­times. I have nev­er been in­volved with one." Sobon paused. "I should also say that the... the Mas­ters that I spoke of be­fore. They are a spe­cial class of be­ing that ex­ists above every oth­er liv­ing be­ing in their abil­i­ty to use aether, but be­low the Ti­tans, or so I would as­sume. No one knows how they have the abil­i­ty to use so much aether, but we do know that they are con­di­tioned from birth, us­ing se­cret ways that they will nev­er tell us. Their whole lives re­volve around con­tain­ing and con­trol­ling aether so pow­er­ful it would de­stroy a mor­tal be­ing. The chil­dren of their race are per­haps more pow­er­ful than I have ever been, or ever be. Just one of their war­riors could de­feat armies of our peo­ple, with­out car­ry­ing any weapons."

"How many would it take to de­stroy our world?" Mian still sound­ed fas­ci­nat­ed.

Sobon just snort­ed. "This world? One would be enough. But they wouldn't only come with one, if they were an­gry. Not be­cause they need more war­riors to do the task, but be­cause like all armies, they have lead­ers as well as war­riors. No, they would send a war­ship, and en­sure that what­ev­er they chose to do, was done right. If they want­ed to de­stroy the world, no piece would re­main."

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Since that thought had suit­ably dis­turbed every­one, Sobon changed the top­ic.

"All that've dis­cussed so far is sim­ply the process of gath­er­ing aether into the body. The stages of ac­clima­ti­za­tion in­volve us­ing aether from each tier--first, Right­eous and/or Sin­is­ter. Then, Gen­e­sis and/or Con­sump­tion. Then, Ac­cel­er­a­tion and/or Re­vival. And then, for those who can han­dle it, the tiers of aether be­yond that. I, and most of my peo­ple, would strug­gle to con­trol more than the third tier, but that is still a very pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous amount of aether."

"Which aether from each tier you at­tune your body to pro­vides dif­fer­ent ben­e­fits. Be­ing in­nate­ly at­tuned to Right­eous aether makes it very dif­fi­cult for hos­tile aether to in­vade. Sin­is­ter at­tune­ment en­hances your abil­i­ty to use aether to at­tack oth­ers, and weak­ens the world around you. Gen­e­sis aether is use­ful for peo­ple who cre­ate aether pat­terns out­side their bod­ies, while Con­sump­tion aether sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proves your abil­i­ty to gain aether, and weak­ens in­com­ing ef­fects. Ac­cel­er­a­tion aether im­proves your re­ac­tion and think­ing speed, while Re­vival aether vast­ly im­proves your re­gen­er­a­tion and can make you near­ly un­kil­l­able."

"That sounds..." Lui was frown­ing.

In­stead of wait­ing for Lui to fig­ure out what she want­ed to say, Sobon fin­ished her thought. "Most peo­ple don't at­tune en­tire­ly to one side or the oth­er. The great­est ef­fects come when you do, be­cause each half of a tier of aether weak­ens the oth­er. I am pure­ly at­tuned to Right­eous Aether, now. Un­less I have rea­son to change, I will at­tune to Gen­e­sis and Ac­cel­er­a­tion. These are are all con­sid­ered Right-hand, or if you pre­fer, Right­eous-type aether, be­cause..." she paused. "...be­cause of the math that un­der­lies them. There is sim­ply a pat­tern that con­tin­ues from one to the next, and there is a sim­i­lar left-hand pat­tern con­nect­ing the oth­er three. But there is no penal­ty for tak­ing dif­fer­ent types at dif­fer­ent tiers; Right­eous and Con­sump­tion are just as com­pat­i­ble as Right­eous and Gen­e­sis."

Lui was still look­ing con­fused, so Mian spoke up. "When you talked about them, my first in­stinct was that one set was for at­tack­ing, and an­oth­er de­fend­ing. But they don't line up with your right and left. Right­eous is de­fen­sive, but so are Con­sump­tion and Re­vival."

"You can think of them more as 'do­ing' and 'un­do­ing,'" of­fered Sobon. "Aether is not specif­i­cal­ly for war­riors. The uni­verse can be split into forces that build and forces that de­stroy, but even then, you of­ten build in or­der to de­stroy, or de­stroy in or­der to build. And as I said be­fore, each high­er tier of aether splits into those that lay be­neath. Not only is Gen­e­sis some­times right­eous and some­times sin­is­ter, but Ac­cel­er­a­tion some­times has the ef­fect of gen­e­sis, and some­times has the ef­fect of con­sump­tion. The de­tails of that..." Sobon had them all in her mind--the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works for break­ing down aether were a fas­ci­nat­ing study of meta­physics--but doubt­ed she would be able to ex­plain them even to schol­ars of this world, much less a cou­ple chil­dren. "...are prob­a­bly be­yond you."

"What about the aura of the pi­rates?" Ki'el asked Sobon, and she looked over at the girl. "You told me at the time that it gave them the strength to crush oth­ers, but cor­rupt­ed them. That it gives them courage against their foes."

Sobon nod­ded. "That's an ad­vanced top­ic, and re­mem­ber that they use qi, and not aether. But the pi­rate cap­tain from that time was in Gold Qi, and he was at­tuned to both Right­eous and Sin­is­ter aether, and part­ly to Con­sump­tion. Right­eous..." Sobon frowned. "You will need to re­mem­ber that Right­eous Aether does not mean that you are a good per­son. It pre­serves the self, but it can be used by tru­ly evil men, and Sin­is­ter aether can be used by the good."

"How­ev­er, while he had a mix­ture of at­tune­ments, pro­duc­ing an aura like that is uses Gen­e­sis aether. You can al­ways use types of aether that you are not at­tuned to; the at­tune­ment pro­vides pas­sive ben­e­fits, and also, your internal re­sis­tance to your own, at­tuned aether is low­er than your resistance to using any oth­er aether type. Which..." Sobon paused, as the thought crossed her mind. "...would mean that at­tun­ing to any pure aether spin would make it dif­fi­cult to at­tune to qi, be­cause qi is built from many dif­fer­ent pieces. I'll have to think more about that."

"In any event, one of the oth­er ad­van­tages of at­tune­ment is that you can place aether pat­terns--I mean, scripts, with­in the tis­sues and or­gans of your body, as long as those scripts re­main with­in the tier of aether that you have at­tuned to, and as long as you don't chan­nel so much aether through it that it pass­es the safe lim­its I talked about ear­li­er." He looked at Ki'el. "The ri­fle shots--the ranged weapons I used be­fore, use so much en­er­gy with every shot that even now that I'm at­tuned, I couldn't use them with­in my body. Not only would it like­ly cause mu­ta­tions with­in my body, but the pas­sage of that much aether would de­stroy the or­gans out­right. That's how even as a squir­rel, I could de­feat a war­rior at Gold Qi."

Ki'el nod­ded, not seem­ing sur­prised. Mian and Lui... seemed con­fused when Sobon men­tioned be­ing a squir­rel, but she de­cid­ed not to ex­plain.

"Once you have de­cid­ed on a pat­tern and placed it with­in your body, it can be dif­fi­cult to re­move or change, and more dif­fi­cult to re­place. The body tis­sues adapt to it, like form­ing scars around a wound. If you wish to com­plete­ly re­place a pat­tern, or change it in ways that go against the ex­ist­ing pat­tern, you have to re­move it and thor­ough­ly heal the scar­ring. That is why I'm not plac­ing any scripts into my body at this point. The scripts that I most need fo­cus on Genesis, to en­hance my abil­i­ty to use oth­er scripts in the space around me. While less­er pat­terns would be use­ful, and while I may even have the room to set them up, that is my fo­cus right now."

"These pat­terns are for tech­niques?" Mian, to his cred­it, seemed to be most­ly fol­low­ing along.

"They help," Sobon an­swered, with a tone to her voice that sug­gest­ed he was wrong. "You can use aether tech­niques with pure ex­ter­nal ...qi as long as you mem­o­rize how, and ded­i­cate your spir­it to per­form­ing it, but there can be many de­tails. I... I think that most peo­ple in this world use qi na­tures to help them. Be­cause qi was..." Sobon paused, and, re­mind­ing her­self that she wasn't lec­tur­ing in her bunker, chose a dif­fer­ent way to say it, just in case any spir­its were eaves­drop­ping that she hadn't de­tect­ed. "Qi is meant to be shaped into spe­cif­ic forms. You can cre­ate types of qi that have spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties, and those prop­er­ties can con­tain part of a tech­nique, so that you don't need to mem­o­rize it. You can also use pat­terns in your body, or in your equip­ment, so that you only need to split your fo­cus a lit­tle in­stead of a lot."

All three of them nod­ded at that, and Mian looked re­lieved. Sobon thought the man had got­ten im­me­di­ate­ly stressed when Sobon sug­gest­ed mem­o­riz­ing an en­tire tech­nique. Sobon didn't think of the man as stu­pid, but he def­i­nite­ly wasn't quite as sharp as Ki'el and Lui were, or per­haps he just hadn't found some­thing that caught his at­ten­tion in the same way that they had.

"Like plac­ing pat­terns in your body, though," Sobon said when it seemed like the three had ful­ly di­gest­ed what she'd said, "cre­at­ing qi with the pat­terns you want in it is some­thing of a com­mit­ment. Your qi core will repli­cate types of qi that you... that you have es­tab­lished?" Sobon dou­ble checked the Ri'lef notes on qi cores, un­sure of how to phrase what she'd read there. "Once you firm­ly es­tab­lish your own fla­vor of qi, it will be dif­fi­cult to change it. Cre­at­ing new fla­vors of qi, or chang­ing an ex­ist­ing one to fix a flaw or add new abil­i­ties, takes time and ef­fort, and it is dif­fi­cult to do cre­ate any­thing with­out flaws."

Sobon was sur­prised that Lui piped up. "What distinguishes... what you call fla­vors, from qi na­tures?"

Sobon nod­ded at her, smil­ing a lit­tle. "Qi na­tures are ar­ti­fi­cial, but they look and feel nat­ur­al. Cre­at­ing qi with a na­ture of fire will feel cor­rect to you, be­cause you know how fire is sup­posed to look, and more im­por­tant­ly, you know what the con­se­quences of fire are sup­posed to be. But what I was call­ing a 'fla­vor' of qi is spe­cif­ic to you and what you need from your qi. If you cre­ate fire qi, but you need it specif­i­cal­ly to burn away im­pu­ri­ties while leav­ing oth­er things un­touched, that is a spe­cif­ic fla­vor of fire-na­ture qi. If you de­cide lat­er that you also want to 'burn' your fire qi as fuel to in­vig­o­rate you, you will need to add that fla­vor to your fire-na­ture qi, or else cre­ate a sec­ond, sep­a­rate fla­vor of fire-na­ture qi. Does that make sense?"

Lui nod­ded ex­cit­ed­ly, and even Ki'el seemed in­ter­est­ed, when Sobon was be­gin­ning to think the girl was un­in­ter­est­ed in any of the more ad­vanced con­cepts.

Mian, though, was frown­ing, his mind churn­ing through some prob­lem. "So if we want­ed to cre­ate a qi na­ture that was com­plete­ly unique to us... could we?"

Sobon shrugged. "The qi I used to hold you to your oaths was some­thing I cre­at­ed for that pur­pose. But es­pe­cial­ly for be­gin­ners, it's dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out how to do all the com­pli­cat­ed things you want qi to do. Some­times it's easy to put it in words but not de­scribe how to do it, and some­times, it's easy to un­der­stand on a soul lev­el but dif­fi­cult to put into words. Many peo­ple learn by ob­serv­ing oth­ers, and in that way, qi na­tures are also a learn­ing tool. Fire users un­der­stand what fire is ca­pa­ble of by look­ing at oth­er fire users, and fire-type in­scrip­tions, or by ob­serv­ing nat­ur­al fire and its many prop­er­ties and nu­ances."

"To be blunt," Sobon said, "part of what you need in or­der to make qi work cor­rect­ly is to un­der­stand the very na­ture of the uni­verse, and how it op­er­ates. But it would take me a decade to teach every­thing I know, and I don't have that time. And what I know is far from every­thing, and also there is also a whole world to teach about de­sign­ing things from scratch, and..." Sobon shrugged. "Per­haps if I achieve my mis­sion, I can spend a life­time teach­ing you, and oth­ers that are wor­thy to learn it all. But not now."

Sobon ig­nored that the three were look­ing at her, again, with the star­ry eyes of youths be­ing in­formed that their se­niors un­der­stand things they do not. She knew that, in a way, it was un­fair to even tease that knowl­edge, but it was im­por­tant to draw the line around why. Why she could cre­ate com­plex aether pat­terns and hold them in her mind, why she could forge sand into quartz with her will alone.

"I know I make it look easy," Sobon said, at the same time she fin­ished the thought in­ter­nal­ly. "I know I make it look like aether and qi are sim­ple things that any­one can learn. I have spent longer than any of you have been alive be­ing trained to be what I am to­day, and I am a poor teacher. You all have the po­ten­tial to do great things, but I can't make it hap­pen in the time we have."

"I want you to think long and hard about what you want to achieve, and I will teach each of you what I can in or­der to make it pos­si­ble. I will cre­ate tools, and show you pat­terns. But if you ask me to help you with a task that will take a life­time, I can­not. At most, I can show you the first steps, and tell you how the next few should go. In the end, your fu­ture will be in your own hands. I can only... in­spire you, I hope. To keep learn­ing, and keep grow­ing, for the rest of your lives."

The oth­ers nod­ded, and Sobon dis­missed them for the evening, the three of them go­ing off sep­a­rate­ly to think about their fu­tures.