Chapter 33 — Soul Strengthening

Ria knocked on Jarrel’s door.

Her worry continued to tick upward the longer the knock went unanswered.

Unwilling to wait further, Ria cracked the door open and called out quietly before slipping inside the room. Still no response.

When she peeked into the bedroom, Jarrel was lying there on the bed, still in the ruined clothes Ana described him returning in. Ria couldn’t believe how many times the shirt and pants had been cut. One of the sleeves had fallen off and there must have been hundreds of slices, small and large criss-crossing and slivering the fabric.

How had he survived?

Maybe because of her fear, several moments passed before she realized he was still breathing. She rushed over and checked his forehead for fever.

No fever. And no sign of wounds or blood on his clothing.

An idea occurred to Ria. If he was infiltrating the criminal underworld then maybe he had been poisoned?

Fortunately, the eavesdropping spell wasn’t the only utility spell Master Marlow had taught her as part of the ‘basics every lady of high-society should know’.

Carefully shaping the energy, Ria cast the specialized divination… and breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t find any signs of poison.

A tap on his forehead and a deep scan for strange energies didn’t turn up anything either.

After shaking him and pinching his nose only produced marginal results, she had to grudgingly admit that maybe he was just exhausted and reluctantly decided to leave him be.

He would miss dinner again, but it couldn’t be helped.

On her way out of the room, her eyes were drawn to the soft glowing moon and twinkles of her painting displayed above his desk. If he was working this hard for her sake… she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Rather, maybe she was the one that needed to push herself harder. The comfort of friends and luxury was lulling her into worrying about embarrassments and stupid thoughts of romance.

Closing the door behind her, Ria turned to head down for dinner but stopped short at the sight of another exhausted person. Keira had her arm draped around Miela for support as the maid assisted the estate’s mistress toward her room.

“Ah… Ria. Did I ever mention that training with fire mages is terrible?” Keira grumbled.

Wide-eyed, Ria could only mutely shake her head.

“Well, it is.”

Ria nodded and quickly stepped out of the way so Keira could pass by. Too stunned by the results of her friend’s training session with Zena to do anything other than stare, it was only after Miela closed the door to Keira’s suite of rooms that Ria remembered she needed to ask Keira for permission to set up a place for her soul cultivation…

With a sigh, Ria descended the stairs and headed for the sitting room looking out onto the back garden to plan out the approach that would yield the best results while she waited for dinner to be ready.

Arthur and Aeri soon joined her, also waiting for dinner that was being held up on account of Keira.

Of course, that led to a foreseeable moment of awkwardness.

“How was Ranger’s new collar?” Master Rigure’s grandson asked.

“Let me ask him,” Ria hedged and quickly checked in with her familiar who was meditating in the earth-attuned section of the garden. “He likes it. Says it can store a lot of energy and makes him dig better.”

Just where was he digging?

Arthur nodded, looking relieved. “I’m glad. Batheli Workshop is known for quality arena gear even if it’s expensive.”

“Um… speaking of expensive, I kinda spent almost all my coins…,” Ria lamely admitted, her ears warming at her friend’s eye roll. “Can I repay you in spirit tokens?”

At the mention of the Elven currency, Arthur looked more eager than expected. “Can I pick the elements?”

“Sure.” Ria summoned the tokens from her pouch, including the ones she won at the student lounge, and spread them out on the table. “Some of them haven’t been filled yet but here’s what I have.”

“What are spirit tokens?” Aeri asked, curious.

Arthur explained the history and uses of the tokens to an attentive Aeri while working through the small pile to pick out the ones he wanted. Fortunately, he only chose already filled ones instead of ones for her to fill.

Ria picked up a fire token and started filling it anyway. She was beginning to worry about how many days would be needed to fill up enough tokens to rebuild her finances. And the current pile didn’t count the two orichalum ones for Martina that she would probably have to ask Tallien to custom make for her… and she would need to store energy for her Grand Games training on top of all that. At this rate, she might have to reserve a meditation spot in Parthanex Tower’s basement and spend several afternoons and evenings just filling tokens.

At dinner, Keira had recovered enough that she wanted details of Ria’s outing with the infamous Novidus boy, as feared, and Ria’s embarrassed reaction to Keira’s probing questions only served to further confirm for Keira that something juicy had happened.

Naturally, there was NO WAY—ever!—Ria was about to admit to wanting the third-year boy to kiss her not once, but twice, but being stingy wasn’t going to help with getting permission for garden modifications, and she eventually gave up the tale about the dip in the road putting her and Hulle face-to-face. The way she told it was steamy enough to make Aeri blush and Keira squeal. Arthur wisely pretended the food was the most interesting thing around.

“I bet he did it on purpose!” Keira accused.

Ria denied it, but the more she replayed the scene in her mind, the more plausible it seemed that he might have faked it to get a better look at her eyes without her realizing. She was still mad that he hadn’t just asked instead of teasing her!

Misunderstanding why Ria was irritated, Keira thankfully let the subject go only to latch onto another one that was difficult to explain—Ria’s eyes.

Admitting that she met with Vesali City’s High Priestess of the Church of Ellnys would surely lead to more questions she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer… Wait, this was a good time for a tactic from her etiquette lessons—she could deflect with a related truth!

Holding up the orichalum bracer wrapped around her forearm, Ria proudly declared, “I discovered my affinity!”

“Oooh, I was going to ask about that weird bracelet next!” Keira admitted with interested eyes.

This topic had Arthur’s full undisguised interest.

“You have to promise not to tell anyone… at least for a while, okay?” Ria warned, and as all three of her listeners leaned forward with raised eyebrows, she whispered, “Orichalum.”

“There’s no way that’s true!” Keira scoffed with a laugh then narrowed her glinting eyes. “I bet you used an illusion on your eyes just so you could say that!”

Ria shrugged. It was rather unbelievable.

“Your bracelet, is that really orichalum?” Aeri asked, eyes wide, her meal forgotten.

“It is,” Ria admitted. “One of the reasons I purchased it is because Hulle wants me to learn metal manipulation from a fifth-year in my Order.”

Judging by Arthur’s expression, he had puzzled out where her wealth had gone—an opinion Aeri seemed to share.

“Wait, wait. You’re serious?” Keira groaned and leveled an even gaze. “You sure Hulle isn’t tricking you?”

A quick demonstration of drawing up a small amount of her smoldering energy and pushing it into her bracer was enough to convince them. Even Aeri said she could feel a strange pressure when Ria used that dangerous energy. Ria still hadn’t fully claimed the energy as hers, but it was clearly becoming easier for her to produce and control for limited periods of time.

“Where would you get a bloodline like that?!” Keira objected.

But that was the question Ria wanted answered too.

Could she have been adopted? The thought made her second guess whether she even wanted to know until she remembered that her blood had connected her with her family when Priest Dohan had performed the divination for her. But that reminded her of something the library third-year, Atresia, had said. “Maybe it’s a gift from Hemse…”

Three sets of eyes moved to look at the amulet of faith Ria always wore.

“You know, the friends of Saints often meet terrible ends…” Keira complained.

Ria let out a nervous chuckle. “There’s no way I’m a Saint.”

A realization rapidly drained the blood from her face. She had received an Oracle...

“Oh gods, what did you realize now?!” Keira groaned.

Ria vigorously shook her head in denial and waved her hand a bit too desperately. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“At least, as an enchanter, I’ll get to stay away from the frontlines and just send the two of you gear and potions,” Arthur teased with a faint smirk.

“Arthur!” Aeri chastised.

Keira laid her head down at the table in an undignified display of resignation, sounding tired as she grumbled, “No, no. It’s my fault for wanting adventure. They say, be careful what you wish for; the gods might grant it.”

Ah! The mood was totally going in the wrong direction! And with her friend already exhausted, she couldn’t risk waiting any longer. “Um… Keira. About that soul-strengthening training I mentioned the other day…”

The laugh that came out of Kiera sounded a bit more hysterical than was healthy.

“...I was wondering if I could make some changes to the garden?”

Keira raised her head from her arms. “If it won’t affect the light-attuned section and won’t upset the Inquisitors then it doesn’t really matter to me. You and Arthur are going to be the only other guests using it for the next few years.” The noble girl shrugged and put her head back down, mumbling, “Ethan puts in a lot of work maintaining it, so make sure to discuss any changes with him beforehand.”

“Ah, okay. Thanks Keira!” Ria gave her tired friend a bright smile as thanks and excused herself from dinner.

Ria wasn’t sure dinner could have gone much better. She felt relieved to have navigated the dreaded post-outing questioning without incurring further embarrassment and without revealing the Oracle. There was no way she could explain that to her friends, and she didn’t want them to start treating her weird.

Ana’s father was in the kitchen with Ana’s other siblings helping clean up, washing pots and polishing the silverware. He was very interested in her plans for modifying the garden and tasked his children with taking over his share of the work and promptly joined Ria to assist in her efforts.

The initial changes that Ria desired weren’t particularly demanding but more would need to be done to improve the garden’s spirituality as she progressed to the latter stages of soul cultivation described in the manual.

For now the tree-cutting from the High Priestess’ garden would be the anchor for the new section. Ria cringed a bit remembering what the High Priestess had said about nurturing the cutting—that she would have to feed it gold. Feeding it the melted gold coin would make her crime of destroying Crysellian currency permanent… If it was an accident, would anyone really hold that against her?

Not that she had much choice since she needed to plant the cutting before it dried out, and it was losing spirituality the longer she waited.

Ria conjured the small branch of stone-like wood with black-veined leaves.

The Vorshan’s butler whistled quietly at the sight of the cutting that would become a new center-piece in the estate’s garden.

They were already at the location bordering the needed elemental attunements—marked by an iron and bronze statue of a deep earth dragon, tattered wings spread to partially shield the shadow-attuned plants from the evening sun. The shadow-attuned section occupied a corner of the large garden where the estate’s walls met.

The larger light-attuned section formed the center of the garden, and at the light-attuned end of the fire and earth boundary, a silver statue of a snake-like dragon coiled around a miniature crystal mountain, similarly marking the convergence of elements that would nurture a light-aligned metal attunement.

Ria liked the statues and found the duality between light and dark-aligned metal attunements fascinating—as did the garden’s original designer apparently—so removing or replacing them was something she wanted to avoid if possible. Better would be to improve their enchantments and attunements.

Fortunately, for Ria’s needs the area of the shadow-attuned section closest to the ‘dark metal’ statue would work fine. The balance between fire and earth was more important than the ratio of shadow energy—or at least that was how it felt to her.

Marking out a circular area that would become Ria’s new meditation space, she planted the cutting of the spiritual orichalum-producing tree opposite the statue, using nature magic to help the cutting take root. As required, the misshapen gold coin was buried in reach of the cutting’s newly grown roots.

To prepare the interior of the meditation area, she and Ethan dug up and relocated plants to reveal the encroaching bed of crypt moss underneath. Ranger came by at some point and was all too happy to assist with the digging.

Initially, Ria intended to remove everything down to the dirt and magic it into something like rock to better hold inscriptions, but she had to admit the moss would be more comfortable to sit on.

As to how to make moss metal-attuned? She came up with a brilliant idea of sprinkling powdered metals into the moss. Of course, she’d have to get the powdered metal first, making it an improvement to be done another day.

The moon was already high in the sky when nightfall came and provided a gentle light that Ethan said wouldn’t harm the plants, unlike lightstones and such.

When Ethan could no longer suppress a yawn, Ria offered that she could finish the rest herself and apologized for keeping him away from his other duties for so long. The man objected of course, but eventually retired back to the manor at her insistence.

In truth, the work that could be done that night was done, and she was tempted to head to bed herself, but finding herself still filled with apprehension about the Oracle and still physically invigorated by the essences from the High Priestess’ garden, she was wide awake and not sleepy at all.

Though reluctant to use up valuable incense when her mind was fatigued, Ria couldn’t help thinking about how hard Jarrel and Keira were working and how Arthur was spending everyday after classes at the Enchanter’s Guild. She needed to push herself harder as well.

Sitting on the moss, Ria held up the spell diagram she had created from the notes Shadwich had given her and shaped her energy, refining the constructs and glyphs until the abjuration spell that would constrain the incense’s spirit energy and metaphysical spirituality from escaping activated and formed a sphere around the newly created meditation area. Once the spell was stable, Ria lowered the completed and active energy construct into the ground, reinforcing it so the spell would hopefully last several hours without her actively maintaining the construct.

The abjuration spell set up, Ria briefly summoned from Jeni’s pouch the beautifully crafted and enchanted lacquered box containing the incense she would need, returning the box to the pouch once a single stick of incense was in hand, its forebodingly melancholy fragrance tickling her nose.

The incense for the first stage of the soul cultivation detailed in the manual was deceptively named Sunlight Between The Branches. The idea was that the sunlight filtered through to expose the darker emotions and regrets hidden on the forest floor below. The incense would, in theory, dredge up the things she kept hidden from herself and force her to face them.

Particularly after the day she just had, Ria was not looking forward to the experience the incense would bring, but pushing away the excuses that sought to weaken her resolve, she forced the stick into the ground and lit the incense with a casual use of fire magic. There would be no turning back.

After a brief query, Ranger also sat near the incense stick and assumed the unified meditation pose. Ria had explained the process to him the prior night at Researcher Shadwich’s recommendation. He had seemed quite eager and had managed to passably perform the necessary pattern of energy cycling required for the first stage.

The patterns became more complex with each stage of the soul cultivation. The first stage mainly focused on improving the connections between locations in the brain with the heart and the mysterious spirit gate that was thought to connect the body, mind, and soul.

Now that she was more aware after the bond-sensing training, Ria could already feel the pressure against her spirit gate from the abjuration she had cast to contain the incense’s spirituality.

Though already able to feel the incense tugging on her subconscious, Ria drew more into her lungs in defiance of the dread and timidity she still felt and focused her mind on the meditation and properly cycling her energy as required by the cultivation method.

Almost immediately, glimpses of her childhood, little scenes of failures and selfishness flitted through her mind, and an upsetting truth began to make itself known: she couldn't remember her parents' faces. Like grains of sand piling up, each memory added to her growing sense of guilt.

The guilt flooded forward, amplified by the incense, and it wasn’t a regret she would overcome any time soon. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. As atonement, she wanted to hate herself for it, for that consequence of being too weak to properly face the loss and spending months distracting herself with her study of magic, putting her parents and family, lost friends, out of mind.

Regret, guilt, and anger at herself raged within her, and she welcomed it—welcomed it because it kept her mind from the overwhelming fear. A new and recent fear, but one that joined with an older fear that had wormed its way through the recesses of her mind since receiving her medallion of faith from Hemse himself.

What did receiving an Oracle and being offered protection by both Ellnys and Hemse’s Churches mean? That the gods were actively acting in her life was terrifying. What terrible future did the gods have planned for her? What impossibilities would be expected of her? And if she failed…

The fear of such a thought was too much to bear, and she desperately grasped at something more tangible—forcefully drawing her mind back from the fear of unknown consequences too terrible to imagine to a fear more defined: her prophesied choice.

For her revenge, she had always planned to take the path of power. But what did the goddess’ warning mean? ‘You will no longer be welcome in human lands.’ Was it because the path of power involved some terrible crime to achieve? Was it because she would no longer be human? Would she lose all her friends?

Having made new friends, the thought of being forced to throw away or betray those friendships… she burned with fury that the gods would put her in such a situation. But, if she had to choose… how many lives lost were her friendships worth? To put a number to it was terrible!

If it was just mankind in general that would abandon her, she could deal with that… maybe. At a sudden realization, her mind ground to a halt. Was that why the High Priestess mentioned Orlisi? But if she could stay friends with the elf girl, surely some of the others would stay her friend as well, right?

Ria groaned, not wanting to continue down that chain of thought either. She needed smaller darknesses to overcome, victories that would be achievable.

Searching more broadly, she refocused her thoughts on finding and coming to terms with her regrets rather than her worries and fears. Thanks to the incense, the memories readily presented themselves to her and the emotions evoked gained a powerful vividness. Her minor embarrassments filled her with shame, but they were easy to withstand compared to the regrets involving her parents, and Jeni… which were gaping wounds she could never make good on, the unfairness of which made her rage. At least with the regrets she felt toward her brothers, she still had a chance to resolve those…

She continued to cycle her energy in the first of the patterns from the manual until the memories became a blur and her tired mind slipped from the task and memories mixed with fantasy and impossible what ifs.

“…Ria!” The hands shaking her weren’t gentle. “What are you doing sleeping outside?!”

Oh no! Ria wrenched her eyes open… for a moment before they drooped, still heavy with sleep. Maybe missing her morning class just this once would be fine, wouldn’t it?

“Come on, Ria!” Keira’s voice berated her. “You’re going to be late for class! And there’s no way I’m letting you miss a class when my family is paying for your education!”

Ugh. Fine. “Fine,” she grumbled and squinted her eyes open with more success than the previous effort.

The blurry view was enough to see that the morning sun was already casting long shadows into the garden.

“Milady, give her a few sips of this,” Miela offered, and a vial changed hands.

Ria didn’t care what they made her drink as long as she would be left alone afterward… but those few drops caused a heat to spread through her body and cleared away much of the fuzziness from her mind.

“Ack! I fell asleep!” Ria lamented, and her eyes mournfully sought out the incense only to fall on a charred spot in the moss where the stick should have been. She had wasted it!

“What do you think I’ve been saying all this time, you ridiculous idiot. You should have used your stamina scroll!” Keira berated and shook Ria again just for added emphasis.

“Alright, alright! I got it,” Ria objected. “I’m awake. Let me go get ready already.”

“Don’t you dare lie back down,” Keira threatened, and a clearly trembling Miela was surely having a tough time holding back great belly laughs at the role reversal, considering that the maid went through much the same with Keira most mornings—maybe even this morning.

Stumbling a bit at first, to Ranger’s snickering amusement, Ria made her way unsteadily inside until Ana helped her up the stairs. To think she’d already regret selling her stamina scroll…