BOOK 12: CHAPTER 17: CULTIVATION CURIOSITIES

17 – Cultivation Curiosities

When Victor emerged from his spirit space, he was eager to put his ideas into practice, but he had some hurdles to overcome. Most prominent among them was developing a plan to rebuild his Core construct into something that would allow his different Energies to flow into his spirit. After all, his current Core construct was “legendary” tier, partially because of its design, and partially due to the amount of Energy he’d managed to gather into it. If he didn’t want to backslide, he’d need a design that didn’t hinder its efficiency.

“Is everything all right?” Cora asked, standing where he’d left her, though now she held her rapier at the ready.

Victor stood smoothly, nodding. “Yeah. I think I figured something important out.” He gestured to the table. “Help me put all these papers and notebooks into a stack.”

Together, they gathered up the Warlord’s notes, copious as they were, and Victor sent them into a corner of his spirit space, intent on further studying them when he had a few hours to spare. After that, he let Cora show him some of the things she’d discovered, starting with the wall of weapons that had apparently been special to the former lord of the citadel.

There were seven swords of all sizes, a pair of spears, daggers, knives, and, soaking up all of Cora’s attention, three axes. Two were great axes, but the third was a hatchet-type weapon with an ivory handle and a smallish blade of pitch-black metal. “Forget about those great axes, but if you want to take that hatchet for now, until we craft you something of your own, I won’t mind.”

“Hatchet? The small one?” She looked at him, her brows drawing together. “Why?”

“Well, first of all, because it’s better than the others. What have I told you about using your inner eye?” Victor wasn’t exaggerating. When he looked at those three axes using his Energy-sensitive sight, the hatchet’s bloodthirstiness was evident. It was a weapon that loved to fight, and one that had done a great deal more of it than the other two. It almost made Victor wonder if it was conscious. Stepping forward and touching the dark metal of its blade dissolved that fanciful idea, though. It was perhaps beginning to develop some sentience, but not yet truly conscious.

“Oh, but…” Cora trailed off as she peered at the axes. “I think I see it, but they all look similar to me.”

Victor tilted his head, understanding dawning on him. “Oh, I think I see. It’s a matter of your aura control. Sorry, my dear student, I guess I’ve been taking for granted all the work I’ve done building up my will and practicing with my aura.”

“My, um, magical fingers aren’t as nimble as yours?”

“Right!” Victor chuckled. He’d taught the girls about the importance of cultivating their will attributes and learning to use their aura as a way to manipulate metaphysical things, including Energy. During one of those impromptu lessons, he’d used the analogy of “fingers.” The truth was, the “inner eye” served to replace more than just touch—it was how any of the senses perceived Energy and the constructs that dealt with it.

He nodded encouragingly, adding, “It makes sense that, with three powerful weapons—weapons far stronger than you’re usually exposed to—you’d struggle to see the nuances. Trust me, though: this one’s good. It might be worth keeping, even.”

“Really?” Her voice was a whisper as she, too, stepped closer to the hatchet, stretching her hand toward the ivory handle. “What sort of ivory do you think this is? It’s warm.”

Victor shrugged, lowering his hand. “Could be anything. Maybe it’s a dragon’s horn.” When Cora jerked her gaze toward him, eyes wide, he laughed. “I mean, it could be, but who knows? Maybe it's from a unicorn.”

“A what?”

Victor waved a hand dismissively. “Forget it.”

Cora smiled, somehow understanding he was being silly, then she lifted the axe down from the wall. “It’s heavy.”

“Dense materials. That’s a good thing. You’ll grow into it.”

“You said ‘first of all.’ Was there another reason I should take this one?”

“You’ve done all your training with a rapier. A one-handed axe is a good way for you to start.” Victor gestured toward the rest of the Warlord’s treasures. “Show me the shards.” ᚱâΝȱᛒΕŚ

Holding the hatchet at her side, Cora hurried across the room toward the case she’d been examining earlier. “They’re in there.”

Victor flipped open the lid, saw the five crystal shards—blue, light blue, yellow, clear, and purple—confirmed they felt like pieces of the Ancestor Stone, then closed the case and sent it into his spirit space. “Good job.” He started toward the back corner. “Come on. Let’s get the key to the cultivation chamber, and then we can go give Ardek the good news.”

Cora’s voice rose with disbelief as she asked, “You’re not going to explore the rest of these treasures?”

“Yeah, sure, but I’ve got all the time in the world to do that. In fact, it might be a good job for you, but right now, we have other priorities.”

As Victor opened the cabinet where his coyotes had picked up the scent of the Warlord’s cultivation chamber, Cora looked over his shoulder. “Other priorities?”

“Yep.”

“Such as?”

“For starters, I want to take a look at the Warlord’s cultivation chamber because I’m curious if he left all his natural treasures in there. I might want to use it, but even if I don’t, you’ll benefit from it a hell of a lot more than I will.” He picked up a heavy golden key with a round, multi-pronged tip. It reminded him a little of the key to his Fae-crafted vault. Holding it triumphantly in front of Cora’s nose, he added, “You’ll see what I mean when you feel it. I mean, assuming nothing's changed since I was there before.”

He turned, and, key in hand, strode toward the door. Cora hurried after him, her shoes clicking on the marble as she ran to keep up. “It’s better than the one at the academy?”

Victor laughed. “It’s better than my chamber at Iron Mountain, and that’s better than the one at the academy—by a long shot. It takes time for a chamber to collect Energy inside it, and the Warlord was obsessed with cultivation.”

“He was?”

“Yep.” Victor led the way through the hallways. As they walked, he indulged Cora’s curiosity and his love of tale-telling by explaining what he meant. “The Warlord was a bad guy, Cora. He was a real sadist who enslaved an entire planet, though many of the people didn’t understand how little freedom they had. Anyway, he didn’t travel off this rock, so he didn’t know even as much as you do about the iron ranks, steel seekers, and veil walkers. When he broke through level 100, he didn’t know what to do next.”

“Didn’t the System guide him?”

Victor shook his head. “Nope, because when he broke through, the System wasn’t here yet. When it came, it probably offered him guidance, but the pendejo didn’t want to give up his control over his people. He sealed away the System stone, locked most of the options, and granted access only to people who earned tokens, which he controlled.”

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“But even personally he didn’t take help?”

Victor shrugged, climbing a long flight of marble steps. “He probably regretted it, but something I’ve learned is that, once you tell the System to get lost, it doesn’t really come around begging you to reconsider.”

“But surely others took the System’s guidance in their hunt for the veil!”

Victor smiled at her. “You might think so, but the Warlord didn’t allow people to gain power beyond what he could control. If someone got too strong, they disappeared. Only a few people knew what was really going on: he and his closest allies were draining them of their bloodlines and affinities.”

“Oh! You told us that story! Didn’t he try to do something like that to Tes?”

“Yep.” Victor led the way down the final hallway and up the stairs, once again stopping to stand before the huge metal door of the cultivation chamber. “Anyway, the point of my little story is that this chamber was his pride and joy; an entire planet’s worth of natural treasures are enclosed in here.” He rapped his knuckles against the dense metal, and it gonged hollowly.

“Are you going to open it?” Cora fidgeted, staring at the lock eagerly. She still held the hatchet, and Victor chuckled, summoning one of his storage rings.

“Just a minute.” He rifled through the ring, looking at belts, straps, and baldrics by the dozens—things he’d looted, had crafted, or purchased over the years—until he saw one that looked right. He summoned it out, then held it up, tilting his head as he measured it against Cora. “This ought to work. Put it on. Your head goes through here, and it rests on your shoulder here.” He helped her put on the supple leather baldric, then he pointed to the silver ring hanging at her hip. “Slip the handle through there.”

“Oh! It’s beautiful!” Cora admired the roses carved into the silver metal and the hand-tooled leather over her chest. Then, as he instructed, she slid the hatchet into the ring so the axe-head rested against her hip, the handle down by her leg.

“That belonged to one of the champions I fought on Ruhn.” Victor frowned, finding he couldn’t remember which one. “I’m sorry, but her name escapes me. She wasn’t alone—”

“One of the thirty?”

Victor narrowed an eye at her. “Ah, dammit. Who told you about that?”

“Lady Arona, of course.” Cora smiled impishly, hands folded before her. “Thank you, sir, for this very wonderful gift. I mean the axe and the baldric, of course. I understand that I’m not entitled to anything so fine, and I truly—”

“All right, all right.” Victor waved a hand. “Enough sucking up. Let’s get this door open.” Victor put the key in the lock and twisted. The locking mechanisms thunked open, the door separated from the housing with a great hiss of trapped air and a surge of potent Energy, and Victor pulled it wide. The wash of Energy radiating from the chamber was rich and heady, but it didn’t affect Victor the way it first had, back in the day when the Warlord had invited him to cultivate in there.

“Ack!” Cora gasped, stumbling and grasping at Victor’s belt to steady herself. “You weren’t teasing!”

Victor laughed, pleased that he could experience the effects vicariously, if not personally. “I told you! This is just the edge of it. When you step through that door, you’ll really feel it.” He stepped forward, tugging her along with him. When she didn’t resist but gamely stepped over the threshold, he nodded, watching her soak it up, eyes closed, breathing deeply, but still steadying herself against him. “Good job, Cora.”

While she worked to acclimate, Victor looked around the chamber. It was much like the one he’d built on Ruhn, as it should be, considering he’d modeled that chamber after this one. It was larger, though, and dozens of amplification chambers were built into the spherical, metallic walls. They each contained a natural treasure, according to the Warlord.

Victor turned and pulled the door shut, ensuring he removed the key from the lock first. He hated the idea of having to destroy the place to get out. “Go ahead, sit down on the platform in the middle. Do some cultivating while I take a look around.” While Cora did as she was told, gingerly walking out to the suspended platform and sitting down, Victor opened his inner eye and let it drift around the chamber.

He was curious about the treasures stored in each of those little vaults. When he’d last been inside the chamber, his aura control was nothing like it was now. His ability to see the hidden aspects of magical objects—and people—was a mere fragment of what it had become. Ever since he’d asked Ardek to close off the citadel, he’d wondered about the Warlord’s inner sanctum and whether or not it was truly as impressive as his memories told him it was.

To his delight, each of the many little chambers radiated Energy. For some reason, Victor had feared the Warlord might have done something with the treasures when he’d discovered Sojourn and…broadened his horizons. That hadn’t been the case, however. He saw a multi-colored swirl of Energy types, from water to air, from blood to iron, and dozens of others. Victor even sensed some spirit affinities—one vault held something that glowered with baleful hate.

As he stared at it, another thought intruded on his mind, and he chased it to the source: his own, underutilized, forlorn cultivation treasures. More specifically, the one attuned to fear. He’d let it languish in his chamber back on Ruhn, but for some reason, he felt the pull of its puzzle on the back of his conscious mind. What had that fear geist whispered to him when it had let him capture it? Something like, I have secrets I can teach you.

“Huh,” he muttered, wondering at the coincidence of the memory—or was it? Here he was examining a cultivation chamber. It made sense that he’d think of his own, wouldn’t it? But still, he’d had the strength to unravel Dar’s wards for years now. Why did he suddenly have the desire to do so? Why did he suddenly care about what the—likely insane—geist had to say? Was it something to do with his revelation about his affinities and his Core construct? “What kinds of secrets do you have?”

“Victor? Did you ask me something, sir?” Cora looked over her shoulder, her dark brows wrinkled in confusion.

“Talking to myself. Get used to it. Anyway, I wanted to see that everything’s still here, and it is. We can do an inventory later.” Victor turned to push the door open. “We need to get moving, ’cause I just thought of something else I need to do.”

She leaped up. “I barely finished one cycle!”

Victor waited for her to step out of the chamber, then, as he pushed the heavy door shut, he asked, “And? How was it?”

“Amazing! It was like ten—no, twenty cycles in the chamber back at the academy.”

“Good. We’ll see how things go, but maybe we can arrange for a regular visit here—for you, at least.” With that, Victor led the way out of the citadel. When he closed the main gates, he looked at Cora and pointed toward the expansive, empty courtyard and the broad boulevard beyond. “Ready to complete your first solo mission as my Regent Apprentice?”

She visibly paled, swallowing noisily as one of her hands moved to rest on her new hatchet’s dark metal. “What sort of mission?”

“First of all, the correct response was, ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ but I’ll try to contain my disappointment.” She swallowed again, licking her lips, and he could see by the way her eyes darted left and right that she was trying to think of a way to save face. Victor bulldozed past the opportunity, saying, “I need you to bring the Ancestor Stone shards to Ardek.”

“J-just me?”

Victor sighed again. He was a little disappointed in her lack of spirit, but he was purposefully overreacting. Rather than respond, he concentrated briefly and, using a thick ribbon of rage-attuned Energy, summoned his bear totem. The huge creature—easily the size of an elephant back on Earth—burst from a cloud of red Energy, roaring cacophonously. The sound pealed like thunder over the courtyard, echoing back to them from the distant buildings that bordered it. Cora shrank back but, to Victor’s delight, quickly found her spine, standing straight in the presence of the gigantic, glowering creature.

“No, not alone.” Victor gestured to his bear. “Here’s your escort.” He called the case containing the shards from his spirit space and handed it to her. “And before you ask, no, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here. I just need to open a gateway to Ruhn. My seneschal there is putting together some staff for this place.”

Victor held out his hands, arching an eyebrow at Cora. She looked at him, confused, then tried to hand him back the case of shards. “Did you want—”

“I need the portal array. You picked it up back on Fanwath.”

“Oh!” She looked at the case in her hands, then started to set it down, but paused, shaking her head. “Can you, um—”

“Just set it down, Cora. I won’t let anything happen to it.”

“Right, um, of course. I’m sorry, Victor.” She sounded near tears, and Victor frowned, mentally reviewing their interaction. After a moment, he squatted and put a hand on her shoulder, peering into her eyes.

“Listen, kiddo. I’m used to dealing with soldiers, so don’t take it personally when I get a little short with you. I’m trying to treat you like an adult, but not because I want to be mean. I’m trying to show you that I respect you, okay?”

She blinked rapidly, her lips pressed tight, as she nodded.

“If I act disappointed, it doesn’t mean I’ve given up on you. It just means I’m trying to show you that I expected something…different from you.” He jostled her gently. “Don’t let it get to you. You’re smarter than I am, so you’ll figure me out in no time.”

She smiled this time as she nodded, but it was a small, pitiful expression, and he knew she was mentally berating herself for not jumping at the chance to “complete her first solo mission.” He took the case from her and put it on the flagstones by her feet. She hastily summoned the portal array from her storage ring. “Sh-shall I set it up?”

Victor nodded. “That’s a good idea.” He watched her get started, then, thinking he might try to lighten the mood, asked, “How would you like to see my palace on Ruhn?”

“Iron Mountain?” she asked, excitement making the words run together.

“That’s right. I need to pick something up there, and we need to contact Lady Arona to let her know it’s time.”

She set down another portal stone. “Um, may I ask what you mean? Time for…?”

Victor nodded. “You may. It’s time for us to go to Sojourn. Time for me to piss off some powerful people.”