Once we returned, I handed the essence bead to Mum for her to deal with it. Her eyes narrowed as she recognised what it was.
She peered over me to look at Father. “A forest fiend, out here?”
“Leecher vines,” he said. “A lone one, from what I found.”
“Good thing you dealt with it,” she replied, “before anyone unfortunate stumbled upon it.”
Her gaze returned to the bead. “Now, what am I to do with it?” she asked, shooting a scathing glare at Father. “Mighty impressive of you to find the exact thing Arilyn would need for his awakening.”
Father averted his gaze. “He will awaken eventually,” he said. “Sooner than you imagine.”
Mum sighed, unable to deny his words. She knew Father hadn’t ventured into the wilderness with the intention of finding something that might help me awaken. It was merely a pleasant coincidence that he happened to be the one capable of finding the forest fiend and putting an end to it.
Her expression grew contemplative as she rested the bead on one of the flat stones. She had gathered and washed a few more to create a makeshift arrangement for cooking. I reckoned she was mulling over the benefits and drawbacks of letting me use it.
Her eyes returned to me. “Do you want to use it to awaken?”
“Only if you allow it,” I said.
Mother nodded before busying herself with other work. I turned to Father, who simply shrugged and began skinning the bird with one of his small knives. He was quite proficient at it, as I saw it. High points in Dexterity or Alacrity made anyone a master of any simple task they had performed a few times.
Eran shot perceptive glances in my direction, though he hadn’t asked any of the questions I felt he should be asking. While our conversation wasn’t very informative, the hints were sufficient for him to piece things together.
I considered telling him about Essence Unification, but it was a long explanation, and I had promised Mother not to teach it to anyone. Eran was perhaps too shy to ask outright, though I knew he would want to learn if he could. After all, we were both equally eager to awaken our paths.
I decided to keep my silence for the time being. In truth, unification required a calm mind and keen perception to the essence flow. Eran could be calm, but I wasn’t sure about his ability to perceive essence.
Mum roasted the skinned bird whole, leaving it atop the flat stone after igniting a fire beneath it. She had seasoned it with various spices and fragrant herbs to mask the meaty stench before beginning to spread butter on the rye bread we had brought with us.
I offered to help with the preparations, but she didn’t need it. Two people were already too many, so I opened the rucksack to check the book I had brought along. I knew it would come in handy to stave off my boredom.
Eran alternated between watching the meat roast and practising archery. For obvious reasons, I found it difficult to immerse myself in the book. Every so often, my gaze drifted towards the bead of essence. I felt like Mum had agreed to let me use it, so why did she refrain from speaking about it? Was she saving it for when we were home?
As the questions swirled in my mind, I noticed she had picked up the essence bead once again and was doing something to it. Her golden essence wove its way into the bead, interlocking and intertwining in a fascinating process I didn’t fully understand.
“What are you doing?” I asked, resting my book on my lap.
She lifted her head and smiled. “It pains my heart to see Jinn planning to make me the villain,” she said, throwing a teasing snort at the man, “who stops you from awakening through the crude method that barbarians devised.”
“I planned no such thing,” said Father.
“True,” Mother agreed. “You do not have enough wit to think of such a devious scheme. That didn’t stop you from leaving me in a bind, however.” A sigh escaped her. “I have already denied Arilyn enough times that if I do so again, he will feel betrayed and come to hate me in the future.”
“I would never!” I interjected.
She ushered me closer, and when I stepped forward, she pulled me into a hug. “You have been ready to take the final leap for a couple of weeks now,” she said, stroking my head. “But I refused to acknowledge it, knowing how brutal the process can be.
“Your grandmother used to say, It is the cost of power…” She took a deep breath. “She was, of course, right, as she tended to be about most things. However, sometimes the cost is too steep for a child to pay.”
“Did it hurt you badly?”
Mum broke into a small laugh and shook her head, wiping a lone tear from the corner of her eyes.
“Let’s finish what we came here to do,” she said. “You can try your hand at awakening when we get back.”
As she finished, my excitement dropped considerably. I still had to wait till we get back? That was going to take hours.
Well, I had waited for months, what more a few hours could do to me? I could not blame her for wanting to get through it in a more secure location.
“I also need to refine the essence bead for you.”
“Refine?” I asked.
Mum shot me a pointed look. “You think I’ll let you consume something you just picked up from the woods? A forest fiend’s core may form with the purest essence, but that doesn’t mean it is devoid of impurities. They may not be fatal, but they can hinder your future. I’m purifying it before you use it.”
With that, she worked on the bead before serving our meals. For the remainder of the day, she didn’t discuss anything about my awakening. While I fidgeted over the path I might awaken to, Mum spent a good amount of time explaining the process to Eran and asking him not to tell anyone. Though this method of awakening was thoroughly proven, many devout people took offence to it, as it did not fall under the purview of their goddess.
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Then finally, under my constant reminders, we cut short the outing before the sun reached its zenith and trudged our way home.
“Will he be able to keep his mouth shut?” Father muttered once Eran broke away towards his home on our return.
Mum shrugged. “The Stonecutters are good folk. Even if he told his parents, they know how to keep a tight lip,” she said. “But word will get out eventually. Hopefully, there won’t be a line of people bringing their children to our home, hoping for me to awaken them.”
I could see that happening. It was the reputation Mum had built helping people.
Once we were home, I asked the question burning in my gut. “Can I begin now?”
“Go meditate while I prepare a few things.”
As she had asked, I sat cross-legged in the study room and prepared myself for what was to come. Finding emptiness proved more difficult than I had anticipated. Just the thought of my awakening sent shivers of joy and excitement through my bones.
The refinement took longer than I had imagined. The hands of the clock practically crawled as I waited, until finally, Mum returned with a small vial of transparent liquid and several metal rods in hand.
She handed me the vial. “Wait a bit while I lay the formation.”
“Formation for what?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from the vial.
“A ward to prevent any upheaval you may cause,” she explained, placing the four rods at the corners of the room. Four threads of essence flowed from her palm as she activated them, and soon, an ethereal barrier formed around us, gleaming dimly. “You see, natural awakenings tend to cause disturbances in the ambient essence, and more. The ward will prevent that.”
“Is this an essence tonic?” I asked, my eyes returning to the vial. The liquid inside was barely a mouthful, yet I could sense the pure essence within it more clearly than ever.
“You could say that.”
“How do I do this? Drink it and then channel it all through Essence Unification?”
“More or less,” Mum said. “It sounds crude, and it will be even cruder. Agonising. Don’t give in to it if you want the process to be seamless. Your Split Focus will help, as will other attributes. We’ll make sure everything outside is taken care of. You only have to pay attention to unification.”
I nodded heavily and was preparing to begin when she turned to Father. “You’ll make sure everything goes seamlessly.”
Father nodded solemnly before settling down in front of me.
“Why Father?” I asked, unable to help myself. “Wouldn’t it be better if you did it?”
After all, she was the one who had taught me the method of Essence Unification and had always stayed by my side to ensure I didn’t run into any issues during the process.
“Because your father’s Gift is perfect for the job.”
I furrowed my brows, glancing between them. “What is his Gift?”
“The ignition requires you to unify a large quantity of essence at the centre,” Father explained, placing a palm over my shoulder. Something passed from his palm into my body, and I felt an electrifying pull outward. My essence, which I had never been able to draw out of my body, was pulled by Father as if it were nothing.
“Whaa…” I was flabbergasted.
Of course, he returned the essence he stole from me, which relieved me a bit, though the process was still startling.
“It’s called Nullification,” he said.
“The awakening will be painful,” Mum explained. “The more essence, the more brutal it becomes. Your father can unload the overflow of essence from your channels faster than it can cause internal injury, should anything go wrong. Though, I don’t think he’ll need to use it.”
“I have complete faith in you, son,” Father assured me, and it worked.
“Unlike the ritual, this is going to take a while,” Mum said. “A quarter of an hour to over an hour, though much of that time will not be painful. All you need to do is channel the essence through the pathways of unification.”
I nodded, eyeing the vial in my palm.
She exchanged a nod with Father. “Swallow it whole.”
I was eager to awaken, yet I felt hesitant as I opened the cork. I calmed my mind with a few minutes of concentrated breathing exercises. Finally, I uncorked the vial and poured everything into my mouth, feeling a deep chill spread across my tongue. I swallowed all the icy liquid, the coldness surging down my throat and settling in my stomach.
My essence responded instinctively, surging to combat the chill. Then it melted in my gut into a fiery storm of essence, engulfing my entire system of channels in a scathing burn.
“Steady,” Mum’s voice echoed in my ears. “Channel the power. Tame it. You know the process.”
She didn’t need to say more. I harnessed all my essence to seize control of the foreign energy. It was unruly, difficult to rein in.
Gingerly, I guided it into the path of Essence Unification. Instantly, I became aware of the pain Mum had warned me about.
It felt as if I had been thrown back to the day I first learned Essence Unification. My body felt like it was splitting apart from the inside. It was as though my muscles, guts, and intestines were being devoured by the swirling essence at my core. That was definitely not the case, but I felt my inner muscles being pulled and contorted under the stress.
My jaw clenched tight, my eyelids squeezed shut, and my facial muscles tensed at every passing moment. Opening my mouth to scream would have been so easy, but if I lost control over the essence, it would all be for nought.
After minutes of incessant effort, I finally succeeded in subduing the unruly power to a degree. My centre expanded by leaps and bounds, concentrating rather than expanding. However, the sheer amount of essence was still overwhelming.
I didn’t feel like I needed all of it to form my seed. Carefully, I withdrew small tendrils of essence, ones so minuscule they caused no trouble flowing back. Even if they did, I had no extra willpower to spare. What was happening in my centre took precedence over everything else.
The concentrated energy swirled in my core like a vortex, its revolution more orderly than chaotic. But that was not enough. It needed to be completely in order.
As I pushed my nascent will to make the flow uniform, my awareness expanded. Eerily, I became conscious of my body’s state. Beads of sweat poured from me in waves, lingering only briefly before evaporating, and I could visualise it all with startling clarity.
The tearing agony reached its peak as all the essence flows aligned into a uniform state, coalescing at my centre at a pace that was almost beyond my control.
Then, something shot through my core. And it wasn’t just the agony.
I let out a raspy croak, expecting the torment to last longer, yet the process was nearly instantaneous and strangely autonomous.
It was as if a straight arrow had pierced through my core, trying to shatter all my hard work. But it couldn’t. Instead, once it breached my centre, it was devoured by the insatiable suction force. The arrow thinned to the mere form of a thread under the pull, yet the essence flowing from it seemed near endless.
I had no clue where it came from, though I was certain it wasn’t from the essence I had ingested. Also, it was green.
All this time, I had worked with colourless, transparent essence, but now, as my centre absorbed the green essence, it began to change.
My embryonic essence seed grew in a greenish hue, and slowly, similar to the green light, eight other pieces emerged. It was as if the green ray had splintered into eight distinct lines, no longer straight, spreading through my body like threads.
My own essence threads.
Immediately, I understood what the ethereal green ray was. It was my Aether Root.
I succeeded.
The swirl in my core solidified, eight intricate threads branching outward, weaving through my channels and spreading throughout my body. Like branches, they grew within me, dividing into smaller veins. Yet they were unlike blood vessels. For one thing, they were piercing green and ethereal, but they were far more spiritual than physical.
The entire process was autonomous. My consciousness remained only as a witness, a bystander to the transformation. The Aether Root reshaped my essence swirl into a green seed, elevating its condensation far beyond what it had once been.
When the spell’s voice rang in my mind, it was softer, as though filtered through something.
[Congratulations. You have taken the first step on your path.]
[You have awakened.]
[Your latent gift, Fractal Soul, is…]
Before I could hear more, I was rudely pulled from my ethereal consciousness as the cries of my own misery tore through my mind.