Hello, thank you everyone for sticking with this series for so long. I will be going on a week hiatus after posting this chapter in order to focus on some school work. After that, the semester will be nearing its end so there is a very good chance the hiatus may extend longer than a week, but there is a chance I might be able to sneak in 1 chapter somewhere in the next three weeks.

 

Well, that's for the future. For the now, the first chapter of the new arc is up!

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Aerien’s POV

 

Place the thumb against the pinky finger of both hands, the three fingers between are extended. It does not matter where you put your hands as long as they are in that position. Take a long breath in and then a long breath out. Think about something that reminds you of earth. Perhaps a pleasant field full of green grass and trees, or maybe yourself having the immovable solidity of rock. In the stationary form, the earth phase of the five elements meditation was the most like the basic meditations taught to most people back on Earth. Likewise, it also boasted the same benefits of easing and relaxing your mind.

 

As my younger side practiced the earth meditation while laying in the bed next to everyone else, which did not feel cramped in the slightest due to the king size scale of the bed and the child size bodies of everyone sleeping on it, as my older side I was doing the same within my spirit world. I only really needed a few minutes of it in order to shake away my fatigue. I imagine the same was likely true for my younger self. However, we both had an unspoken agreement that if we are trying out the earth meditation, I ought to try gathering the earth element as Gaerien had suggested.

 

The question is, how? Well, this space seemed to move according to my will before. So, perhaps I should just picture it in my mind? As I began to imagine the lump of stone gathering in front of my large spirit manifestation, I managed to achieve something that I am not sure is a success, but am not so sure is a failure either. There was indeed a rather large stone in exactly the location I had pictured. However, it had not been pulled from anywhere. As soon as I began picturing a stone being there, it simply materialized.

 

I am relatively certain though that this is not what Gaerien was meaning for me to do. I could sense no real changes in my spirit world, and there was still just as much stone floating around in the areas farther outside this eye of the storm as ever. This was rather troubling. I legitimately could not tell if I had even accomplished something or not. I suppose it may look cool to have this giant chunk of stone floating in front of a giant blue man, but aside from that I do not really feel like I have accomplished anything.

 

So, where exactly am I supposed to go from here? This feels as strange and frustrating as that whole spirit speech thing. Well, the way I had solved that one was more accident than innovation. So, maybe the solution is to simply go through a sort of trial and error until something works? The way Gaerien had said it seemed like the process should take a lot more effort than materializing this huge lump of stone did as well. Yeah, I definitely did something wrong, I just have absolutely no idea what.

 

Let’s see, what did she say exactly? Something about elemental energy around a planet or something like that? Perhaps I should ask her again later. Come to think of it, I have no idea what my energies in this place are even doing right now, let alone what it is supposed to be like as I begin to do what Gaerien has said I should do.

 

This is an issue. As a nurse who studied the physical body and how it works, and a martial arts practitioner who has mastered their own body and getting it to peak performance, it seems absolutely unacceptable for there to be something this big about myself that I don’t know anything about.

 

Well, I have not really had the time to sit back and examine this. It almost makes me dizy to think about it, but it has only been a few weeks since I learned about all this inner spirit world stuff in the first place. Before that, it was all just trying to move and getting my body to obey me. Now, I just grew up suddenly, and all neural problems with mobility seem like an issue of the past. Now, those problems have been replaced with nobless oblage and this whole mess with them trying to hold Ether guy accountable for the deaths of a bunch of people in the village I was born in.

 

Ok, ok… try to let go of that thought. This is meditation time. Worry will only cloud my thoughts when I try to take action and disrupt my rest when I’m trying to get myself back to my best. I have already done what I can, they accepted the use of Earth rules for the court case easily enough, and here it seems the two boys, Gaerien and I are not the only people from Earth they have here. And, one of them is an actual lawyer on top of that. He is the one who will be setting up the correct formal rules. I have done all I can, it’s out of my hands now. The only thing I can do is wait for the fairy court to convene in the morning.

 

So, back to the idea of manipulating my energy. I was fairly certain this hunk of rock I materialized was not the alignment of earth elemental energy I had meant it to be. So, I dismissed it, and it instantly crumbled into dust which then fell into the void below. With that out of the way, I directed my attention toward the area outside this “eye of the storm” I had around my spirit giant.

 

With a thought, I was outside the “eye” and in the middle of an asteroid field like none other. Large hunks of ice existed right along side pools of magma which floated around from place to place at random, and the winds and rains kicked up by the nearby hurricane were also like nothing you would find in the depths of space where you would normally see asteroids. I got the sense though that this was not all. Not by a long shot. I could sense that the area above me was somehow more energized, so I went to check it out. Once again, I moved by teleporting and instantly arriving at the part of my spirit I wanted to be.

 

The first thing I became aware of upon arriving up here was that it was hot. It did not seem like heat or cold could negatively impact me in any way if it came from my own spirit like this, but somehow I could still sense it was very very hot. It was as though I was standing on the surface of the sun. I could smell ozone and somehow sense the electricity in this air as well. There were no more hunks of rock, but there were several molten pools. Somehow, despite the brilliant brightness of the light up here, I could somehow just sense that these molten pools were melted metal and not the magma from further down.

 

Interesting. If I’m following this correctly, everything up here is a charged form of one of the four elements from farther down. In that case, rock becomes metal, fire becomes plasma and light, water… well, at this temperature, water would also be plasma. However, come to think of it, the cloud layer of those hurricanes further down does always seem to maintain a certain height. So, it’s steam which becomes clouds. What is wind then? Wind is a gas. Well, just like everything else other than the earth element, the air molecules would also be plasma at this temperature. However, lightning is essentially a phenomenon where the electrons in the air spontaneously ignite into plasma for a fraction of a second in a guided wave motion.

 

Hmm… I see. When combined with heat, all the elements become one. If the temperature were increased farther, even the molten metal would become vapor and then plasma. Heat is really just a manifestation of energy, and the energy in this system is all coming from my meditation pulling it from heaven. The more charged with energy the element is, the closer it becomes to some form of plasma.

 

There must be something similar going on with the depleted state of each element. I am not very sure that will be quite as obvious until I start to allign all the elements though. Hmmm… aligning the elements. It’s all coming from the top like… yes! That’s it! The energy from above looks like it’s just light from down below at the normal level of this area. This light is made up of the four elements, just like visible light divides into the colors of the rainbow when seen through a prism.

 

But… if what I’m thinking is right, that would mean Gaerien gave me a completely wrong way to do this. Well, she has admitted herself several times that she does not know as much about human science. Maybe she simply did not know. Well, anyway, now I know how to proceed. My younger half is going to have to get a lot farther with her own meditation first though.

 

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“Other” Aerien’s POV

 

Block and draw the other hand back to shoulder height in the same motion. Follow up with a counter strike. The counter strike uses gravity and swings like a pendulum. This is more complicated than it sounds. If you have even the slightest tension in your shoulder or your core body, your muscles will actually resist the momentum of the swing.

 

This is the earth’s kata. It was not like normal kata that were done in other martial arts styles where you just memorized a bunch of different moves in order. If that was all, it would be really easy to do this. All I would have to do is just get what I was supposed to do from the old man’s memory. However, the kata that made up the basic movement portion of the five elements meditation were all only a block followed by a single counter strike, and for some strange reason the first one was the most complicated one.

 

It looked really easy if you just watched someone do it, but I knew how I was supposed to be doing it from the old man’s memory, and it really was a lot harder than it looked. Just the one simple motion of swinging the arm down past your hip and up into an imaginary target’s jaw required you to know your body very well.

 

Of course, the other part about this kata being so short was that you are expected to repeat it over and over and over again while training. The old man’s style had a tradition of never practicing the same thing for long enough for you to form bad habits or get too attached to one technique. However, the kata of the five elements meditation were the one exception to that rule. And so, in order to do the earth meditation more effectively than the stationary form allowed, I was going back and forth across the room as I advanced on my imaginary opponent, delivering one strike with my finger tips after another to the sensitive area under his jaw bone.

 

The worst part of all this though was that I had an audience. It seemed the fairy ladies couldn’t see in the dark, so they had left a while ago. Sagel though seems to have also gained my dark vision when he made his familiar contract, so he can see me just as well as I can see him, and he has been sitting on the couch watching me go back and forth.

 

Ahhh! This is starting to get exhausting! I keep getting distracted by Sagel being there and watching me! Ok, ok! I am supposed to be calm in this stuff. Getting upset will break my meditation. That’s a bad thing. I am supposed to be able to stay calm when I am upset. I am supposed to not even get upset when things are difficult. Being upset will make it so I can’t deal with difficult things as well. The ability to be calm under pressure is one of the more important things you get from meditation. This shouldn’t bother me.

 

I let out a breath and stand in a more neutral on-guard position. It is supposed to be a good habit to not just exit your fighting stance in training so you don’t make that mistake in a real threat situation. After this, I let out a long and calm breath and bring my hands to a prayer position, and then I separate them and make a large circle from above my shoulders to below my hips, before finally raising my hands again and then gathering an image of my own energy, which I then force downward.

 

This was a standard ending for most routines in tai-chi. The old man had apparently practiced this as well for a little while. He didn’t really learn the martial art, he was just interested in the meditative movements for a little while. I could see from his memories that it felt good to end routines with this though, so I decided to imitate it.

 

“Your highness.” Sagel said, apparently picking up on the fact that I was finished. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that routine looked as though it was meant to be done with a partner.”

 

“Umm… well… kinda.” I responded. So, was THAT why he kept watching me? Evaluating my style and making judgements!? And something about his tone just made me feel more embarrassed for some reason too. “Umm… it can be done by yourself or with a partner.” I told him. “Usually the partner has to know the kata too, and you do three repetitions of it each before switching and letting the other person practice it.”

 

“I see. I take it this was part of the moving meditation that your method boasts?”

 

“Umm… yeah.” I looked away with a somewhat difficult expression. There was a lot to the kata, but it was very hard to explain. “It was the earth’s kata, so you meditate on the feel of earth as you are doing the kata. Umm… actually, the feel of earth comes from the kata. That’s how you are supposed to learn what it is. You can’t even do the sitting meditation right until you learn the feel from doing the kata.”

 

“Interesting.” Sagel responded. After this, he began imitating my movements from a short time ago, going through the same set of moves. Of course, he messed up the same part everyone messes up. I could tell just by looking at the way he moved his arm, it was too fast and too stiff.

 

“No, you are doing the attack wrong! You gotta use gravity! The feeling of earth is all about using gravity to your advantage!”

 

‘If it will help’ The old man suddenly chimed in, ‘you can think of your fingers during the attack as a stand-in for a weapon. All of the kata can be performed as a very combat viable maneuver by adding a short blade held in the hand doing the counter strike.’

 

“Huh?” I reacted out loud. ‘Umm… I thought you were trying to do the thing Gaerien talked about inside our spirit.’

 

‘Ahh, so that’s what was going on.’ Sagel said.

 

‘Sagel! Can you stop talking in my head!?’ I exploded with a slightly panicky feel all of a sudden. I’m not entirely sure what it was that set me off all of a sudden, but something about this was just starting to get overwhelming and Sagel didn’t need to talk in my head in order to communicate.

 

“I apologize your highness.” He said in a soft voice. “However, in consideration of Gaerien and your friends, I imagine it would likely be more appropriate to avoid talking aloud.”

 

Ahh! There he goes again! We’re two halves of the same person to him, so he just went and made a decision for me without asking.

 

‘I am forced to wonder though,’ the old man continued. ‘Why did you speak out loud until I started talking?’

Sagel seemed a little troubled about how to respond, but a second later I wound up hearing his voice inside my head.

 

‘I see.’ The old man replied. ‘Well, perhaps we can move onto another important matter now. Is there any sort of training ground around here? Preferably something with a woven matt in order to cushion a fall. It will become important in order to practice the combat portion of my art, and it would also save on having to re-arrange the furniture all the time.’

 

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"The old man's discovery of how the elements interact sounds like the beginning of Aerien gaining massive power."

                                                                                                                                                         -Vorquel

 

"even if that side of her becomes the grand arch mage its still capped my little Aery will always stay as a limiter."

                                                                                                                                                         -Roy

 

"I hope he learns to get along with younger Aerien soon. At this rate it seems like there is going to be a fight."

                                                                                                                                                         -meowingLexi