Author's note

Posting the chapter a little bit early. It's Monday the 20th server time right now, just not in my time zone yet, but I think it works out. Besides, I'm pretty sure nobody is going to complain about getting to read the chapter a little early.

 

Well then, this is the start of the new act. *enters dramatic voice* "When last we left our heroes, big scary queen lady made Aerien cry by telling her the bad men were coming to get her. How terrible! How could that mean lady scare our poor innocent little hero? How will she deal with the trauma? Find out... right now! Time to start the new epic story!"

 

Lol, sorry, just had to do that. Anyway, expect a faster pace this act. Up until now, I just kinda had a general direction I wanted to move the story in. For this act, I actually have the entire thing more or less planned out. About the only thing not planned out in detail are a few side details and the exact locations chapter breaks should go. So, this one will be overall a lot more tightly written.

 

Well then, enjoy.

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1st arc: Infancy

Act 3: Fear

 

Aerien’s POV

 

Those loud whale sounds and the message behind it driven seemingly by pure waves of spirit energy eventually came to a stop. I had long since calmed down, but that did not stop my mind from worrying. Well, really, worrying alone would not do much. I would have to do what I could as best I could in the days to come in order to make myself capable of at least acting for myself and not being forced to lay there docile should someone come to kill everyone in this place.

 

(It stopped now, it’s Ok.) Levin says in a shaky voice as he continues to stroke my back. Hearing the second part, the “it’s Ok” assurance, frustrated me a bit. It was completely understandable. He may know I was reincarnated like him, and also that I was a fair bit older than him in my previous life, but this does not change the fact that he was comforting a crying baby.

 

(I wasn’t crying about that!) I told him. The frustration was practically dripping from my voice.

 

(What is it then?) Rolwen asks, looking over toward me as he’s still supporting Gaerien in his own lap.

 

(It was what the thing was saying.) I reply. (The voice, it was sent with spirit energy so only elves and other fey could hear it.)

 

(Huh? What do you mean ‘they’?) Levin responds.

 

(Fey! Weith an F.) Rolwen corrects him. (It means like… it’s something that means faeries and elves and other things like that. I think satyers are also a kind of fey.)

 

(Satyers?) You could practically see the question mark over Levin’s head at this one.

 

(It’s like humans with the lower body of a goat. Like… like Tumnus from Narnia.)

 

(Actually,) I cut in to correct Rolwen, (he was a fawn. Sat… err… DON’T!) I cut Rolwen off with a harsh glare before he can finish my word for me again. (The… the one he said before! They are a lot more goat like than fawns.) It was hard to explain it to them like this when I wasn’t able to speak clearly, but fawns had just the lower half of a goat and occasionally some little stubby horns on their foreheads. Sayters however were more or less bipedal goats with the only thing human-like about them being the musculature of their furry but still human-like upper body and the fact that they had hands like a human as well. Their head, however, was very much that of a goat and the male satyers had large curled horns down the sides of their heads. Really, the only thing missing between a satyer and the classic goat-headed demon portrayal was that a satyer did not have wings.

 

(Well, anyway, what was the… err… voice saying?) Levin brings us back on track.

 

(A war.) Gaerien informs them, cutting in before I can give the answer myself. Maybe she was feeling a little left out of the conversation and decided to take her opportunity now that there was something she could answer.

 

((War?)) both of them respond, looking to one another and then to me. I give a nod in confirmation, after which they both look back to Gaerien, imploring her with their eyes to go on.

 

(Umm…) she reacts, looking between the two of them. (Well, it was saying someone evil had come into the forest and was after something that belonged to the elves, so they were going to fight them.) That was cutting out some details, but I actually had to agree with her approach. I did not know for sure what all that “scar of heaven” stuff was about, although I did have my suspicions. However, it was probably a good idea to leave details like that out for now until we had some confirmation.

 

She had essentially broken it down to the basics. “Evil” invader comes in to invade someone else’s soverign soil in order to steal resources. A classic resource war. Well, I don’t usually like to toss the term “evil” around too lightly, but of all the motivations for war I suppose the aggressor in a resource war could be said to deserve the title more than any other. Then again, in a call to arms like what we had just received, it was entirely possible the source could be biased and was trying to rile people up in order to get more recruits for their military.

 

(Well, what can we do? We’re not old enough to fight or anything, right?) Rolwen comes in with his own 2 cents.

 

(That don’t matter) I respond. (I think Ether guy is supposed to be strong or something, but things will get crazy here and something could happen even if we are not soldiers.) Yes, these kids were raised in the United States back on Earth. A country that had its last land-war with Mexico well over a hundred years before they were born, and that was a war of expansion into areas that were not heavily populated. No, the last land-war before that that had destroyed entire cities and resulted in the destitution of the innocent bystander women and children was the Civil War a century and a half ago.

 

The horrors that were placed even on innocent bystanders in a land war were not even in the living memories of their grandparents. Perhaps their great grand parents might have participated in the second world war and saw the devastation wrought on France, or even the results of the air raids on England or Japan, but those were all events that were far from home and would not have been significant enough on a US citizen to have much of a cultural impact. No, US citizens who had never seen military service did not know the true horrors of war.

 

I was really one to talk though. I myself was too young for the draft when Vietnam was going on, and had no interest to join for the Gulf war, and while I could have joined in my middle age years when 9/11 happened I was in the middle of my school for nursing and just starting my own family so I had no interest there either. However, I had more exposure to the world than these kids, and also had the benefit of several former active duty military personnel in my dojo both while I was a student and also when I became the master of my own. I did not have the personal experience, but the stories I had heard and the images they conjured told me enough to be aware that this was not something we wanted to take lightly.

 

Well then, we will just have to train our ability to be self mobile a little more earnestly. Also, it seemed it was about time to start seriously looking into this whole cultivation thing. First, though, I had to get Gaerien to help me with that whole “inner world” thing.

 

-

 

Back when I had entered Gaerien’s inner world, I had stepped into her world the moment the door was formed. At that time, I had seen projections of my mind form, both as my former self from my previous life and also as my child self from this life. As this happened, the world inside my mind had gained a lot more sharpness and clarity. However, I had not bothered to look around, and as soon as I was done in Gaerien’s world I broke the meditation and woke up in my physical body.

 

This time, now that I had experienced it once, I was together with my other self, standing side by side as the child and the old man, and the both of us were looking over our inner world.

 

To be honest, it did not look like a world I would want to live in. I was actually rather shocked this was what the inside of my spirit looked like. At the moment, the old man and the little girl were standing on top of a grassy hill near a small speckle of light that seemed like a rip in the very fabric of this space. If we were to look toward what might be considered the center of this space though, the scenery was instantly dominated by a huge spiraling black vortex that seemed to drag in all matter around it. It had already sucked up all the other land and left it a complete inky black void, the grassy hill we were standing on seeming to be the only foothold left in this desolate place.

 

Above us, there was a light. It was not a painful light to look at, not what I would call as bright as the sun, but it was quite bright. It was probably only because the eyes we had inside of this space were not physical organic eye that we were able to look directly at it. At the heart of that light, there appeared to be a swirling, constantly moving filigree of dancing patterns. It was not some etchings on the surface of the light source, it was more like watching the surface of a pool of water that had some dye dropped into it. And, as the patterns shifted, rays of light could be seen brimming out and dancing through the upper portion of this space.

 

The rays of light would touch here or there throughout the space, and every time the light passed over it the dark void seemed to ripple as though in pleasure like it was being gently tickled, and then it would rise up as though in pleasure to receive this beam of light. I had seen fish in a fish hatchery being fed before. The matter in which the darkness seemed to rise to meet the light seemed very similar to the eager fish in the hatchery leaping to get the fish food before it had even hit the water.

 

There was no way of looking at this sight without coming to the conclusion it was some kind of broken world. This space was definitely out of whack something serious, and I did not even know where to begin on putting it in order. Well, the first thing I should probably do is invite Gaerien in to contribute her expertise.

 

The two projections of my mind turned to look at the smaller shimmering light near the middle of the small purchase that was the only solid ground in this space. That light, it was probably our end of that spirit connection Gaerien had mentioned. I definitely got the distinct sense that it was somehow at the exact location the flame I had risen to be the doorway was before. A flame was the best thing I was able to come up with at the time, but the weakness of a flame is that it goes out once you stop feeding it fuel. As such, there was no more sign of that doorway of flame I had once conjured.

 

The light from above seemed to shine even brighter on the shimmering crack in space. Just like the darkness, the spirit connection seemed to greedily drink in the light coming down from above. It looked as though it was trying to forcefully widen using the light to fuel it. Perhaps Gaerien was trying to help from her end.

 

“Well, I guess we had better let her in.” I say to my younger self.

 

“Alright!” I respond, running around to the other side of the shimmering hole in my own spirit from the old man. We may be separate personalities, and we may have separate levels of surface knowledge, but our subconscious was linked which allowed me to know immediately what it was the old man was planning to do.

 

As we are standing on both sides, we begin the slow and gentle breath of earth once again. In perfect unison, we both form our hands into the mudra of earth. As we are doing so, the light and darkness in this space both seem to grow stronger in unison. The land we are standing on gets dragged to the center of the space as the two competing forces are now both feeding and also draining energy to and from this land. Overall though, there seems to be a net positive effect and the grassy hill expands rapidly into a grassy field.

 

Next is water. A lake springs up between me and me, my older and younger selves, right below the shimmering portal that seems all too happy to be more directly exposed to the light from above. The water spreads quickly like a water main had been broken. Or rather, it might be more the correct image to say a burbling spring had opened up and was filling the space very quickly with water. The water never touched the feet of either of my mental protections though. Instead, the very ground beneath our feet seemed to expand, causing us to move further away from the shimmering mass in the center of the forming lake.

 

Finally, it was time for fire. The shimmering portal immediately burst into a brilliant golden flame. I could feel the wind beginning to pick up before we had even moved onto the mantra and mudra of wind, with three of the elements already present it seemed the fourth had no intention of being left out. Seeing this, I quickly shifted the thumbs of all four of the hands between my two projections to the respective index fingers. I pressed all four of my hands forward toward the flame and let out the breath that served as the mantra of wind. The wind picked up, and the flame grew bigger.

 

I could sense something was in the raging golden flame. Well, time to complete this. In unison, my older and younger selves broke the mudras on our hands, shifting to open palms, and allowed our breathing to slowly sink with a breath out that was even gentler and slower than the mantra of earth. It was as though the air was being slowly sucked from our lungs rather than us consciously breathing out. In this moment, the flame and the wind seemed to be sucked into the lake beneath them. At the same time, the lake became a swirling vortex as the water rapidly drained from it. The land converged, and this dragged my two mental projections together until we were standing close on either side of Gaerien’s mental projection in her full low-key affluent goddess form.

 

She looked quickly from side to side after she arrived. “Well, I really don’t think I have ever heard of someone being able to alter their inner world that quickly. You really weren’t kidding when you said the guiding principle of the art attached to your meditation was adaptability, it definitely showed from that little performance of yours just there.” She nodded, looking to her left and right as she repeated the gesture for both my mental projections.

 

“Well then,” she says, looking around. “This is certainly a rather unique space. Overhead is a sea of light, and below is a sea of darkness. I guess this also fits what you told me about your meditation involving calling energy from heaven and sending it into the void. However, the energy and the void seem to be taking up too much of the space in here right now. You might want to start by trying to shrink them and putting them in the middle or something.”

 

Well, that makes sense. My two mental projections nod to one another and we immediately begin attempting to do as she said. We start by trying to imagine a sort of containment barrier surrounding the two light and dark forces, pressing them toward the center of this space. As we do this, the little floating island the three of us are standing on move along with Gaerien’s spirit connection off to the side of the space so we can get a good vantage point on what we are doing. We seem to be succeeding in forcing the light and darkness to retreat toward the center. It is hard though. There is a lot of resistance, and I can tell there is no way this containment barrier idea is going to keep working once we get it to the place we want it.

 

New tactic then. The idea behind the meditation is similar to that of a vacuum cleaner. The energy of heaven wants to flow, it does not like to be kept stagnant. As such, if you expel the energy of heaven from your spirit, more will instantly come in to fill that void. In other words, the best way to get more of the energy of heaven was to spread it. My advanced form of the meditation though created the void that the energy of heaven liked so much inside of my own spirit. If it is the void that attracts the energy, maybe we don’t have to worry about the light. If we just shrink the void, the energy of heaven ought to follow suit.

 

This seemed to work for a little while. We pressed the darkness to the center of the world. In the next moment, it seemed like the vortex of darkness was replaced by a vortex of sparkling light. The light that was spread all throughout this space was still being cast about from the source above, but now the exit had shrunk. This resulted in a great turbulent whirlpool that shook this entire space. My entire inner world shook with the violence of the storm, and I ultimately had to release the containment on the darkness. At least the darkness was gentle.

 

The storm of light energy immediately calmed when the exit route was the entire area once again. This was definitely troublesome. So, it seems like the darkness is not the cause of the problem here, but the response to it. That means, contrary to our expectations, the issue that has to be addressed is the swirling light above.

 

“Alright, one more time.” I say as the old man. Both of my mental projections raise our hands up to the light, attempting to forcus it directly downward. Unlike previous things we attempted though, this is a lot less responsive. We are occasionally able to bend some of the light rays shining off at the furthest extremes slightly downward so they do not hit the edge of my inner world. However, there is absolutely no lasting impact to what I’m doing.

 

“Hmm… this seems rather troublesome” Gaerien says. "Perhaps it’s time to take a different approach. How much do you know about the nodes on the body’s energy pathways?"

 

“Hmm, nodes?” I respond, exploring over her word in my mind. If it is nodes, similar to lymph nodes, and they are on what she calls the body’s ‘energy pathways,’ then there is definitely something in Hindu and Bhudist mysticism that fits that description. I not at all unfamiliar with this subject either. While it may have its origins in the Hindu religion, that did not necessarily make it a sacrilegious thing for me to have studied it. And, it seemed to be a large part of why the scientifically proven effective practice of acupuncture supposedly worked, so there had to be something real related to it that medical science simply hadn’t discovered yet.

 

“We do have something I have heard of that you could be talking about” I said as the old man. “They are called Chakras. To confirm, there are seven primary chakras, twenty one minor chakras, and then a number of other peripheral nodes in the chakra system. Does this sound like what you are talking about?”

 

“Yes, that’s it. Good. Well then, try manifesting the seven primary chakras. I think that ought to get us somewhere.”

 

My two mental projections gave another nod to each other, my young self looking concerned and skeptical, also a little tired. Meanwhile, my older self had a resolute look on his face, ready to get this done. We both held our hands out toward the center of this space again, and a line of six globes of light, colored from bottom to top as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, descended from the larger swirling light above. They seemed to rock violently as though upset to be away from the greater light above, and some seemed to flicker as though trying to hold onto their light. Despite their protests though, the six lights began spacing themselves out equally below the larger greater light.

 

As though sensing what had happened, the light above began to converge on the six vertically aligned spheres of light, and a single column of light and energy pierced all of them. As soon as this light pierced them, they all seemed to calm down. Those that were flickering unsteadily immediately stabilized and burned with a steady glow. Despite this, I couldn’t help but have an underlying sense of unease at what I was seeing.

 

“One is missing!” My younger self says in alarm.

 

“No, it’s there.” Gaerien says. “You said the basis of your meditation was on drawing energy from heaven. The Sahasrara, the topmost of the seven chakras, is also called the heaven’s chakra. It seems yours is having some problems.”

 

“Hah! Well, at least we know the source of the problem now. Perhaps we can start trying to fix it.” My old man projection says.

 

“Well, yes, we can start going the correct direction.” Gaerien says, looking from one of us to the other. “This might very well be a lot more difficult than I thought at first though.” She then looks intently toward my old man self. “The source of the problem, I think a lot of it has to do with you. Your mental image of your self from your previous life.”

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