Nimh had not intended to return to Wolfgang’s base, yet his feet had led him there. The dead bodies were still there, but Nimh did not see them as he climbed the stairs.

Instead, he saw the woman who had been enslaved. He could not wrap his head around how it had happened, nor what kind of people could allow such an act to be so commonplace.

“Just how broken are these fucking people,” Nimh growled.

He paused, looking around. He was back in the training room. Back in the place he had trained Keira and bought both of them up to E Rank.

Tears pricked at his eyes. Had it only been a few hours, less than a day since then? He had been focused and hopeful, determined to regain his strength and conquer the undercity.

But now he had, and he felt like the undercity had taken something precious from him.

“Meira,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Collapsing to his knees, he wrapped his arms around himself and did something he had not done in decades. He cried.

“It’s fucked up, isn’t it?” Marcus’s voice echoed in Nimh’s spirit. “You know, I knew how messed up my life was, knew how bad things were for others but I never thought I’d meet someone who actually cared.”

For a moment, Nimh considered sending Marcus through the spiritual seed. Marcus seemed to catch on to Nimh’s thoughts as he quickly backpaddled.

“I just don’t get it. You stole my body, killed those kids and wiped out the governing infrastructure of the undercity, but slavery is where you break down? It’s like you’re both a deranged killer and a soft-hearted coward. What are you?”

Nimh considered Marcus for a moment, then decided to answer. “Have you ever loved someone, Marcus?”

“I’ve had a few lovers. But no, I don’t think I loved them. Just some fun, you know?”

“Then you probably won’t understand it. I left my wife and unborn child because I believed in my people's way, in what it stood for. I left her, with the belief that I could make my way back to her. Can you comprehend that?” he asked.

Marcus was silent, his ignorance speaking volumes.

“What I am feeling now, Marcus is grief. Grief because someone just like me has spent the last twenty years allowing a desecration that twists everything my people stand for. Grief, because I do not know what I will need to become to stop this evil from existing. And grief because I miss the people I love. And grief because if I let something like slavery exist, I will never allow my loved ones to come into this world. Which means I will never see them again.”

“That sounds rough,” Marcus said lamely. “But aren’t you going to conquer this world anyway? Once you’re at the top can’t you do what you like?”

Nimh did not have the words to describe just how wrong Marcus was. He had seen it in the easy acceptance of Keira as she spoke about slavery. In a casual way, Stain had enslaved that poor woman. This society was rotten enough that it didn’t even baulk when it stole a person’s future.

Nimh had told Keira that no one could take her future or her choice. He now knew he was a liar. Because someone could. That casual enslavement had proven that everything he believed in was empty, holding no weight in this society.

“Maybe I should burn it all to the ground,” Nimh said softly.

“Well, are you sure there’s no way to break the slave contract? I mean, sure Stain said it was impossible, but he was an asshole just a few hours ago. That changed pretty quickly because of you, right?”

That made Nimh chuckle.

“And you saw something right? When that girl obeyed your commands. Maybe it’s just one of your arts you haven’t figured out yet like you told Keira. You only know two arts, right? Didn’t you say there were like hundreds out there? Maybe…”

Nimh stopped listening as his brain whirled. An art? Could that be the answer? An Art of the mind that forced servitude? His fist hit the floor in frustration. How could he be so stupid to not have thought about it?

He thought about the Transcendent woman he had met in the Realm of Thoughtful Heights. He thought about the subtle way she had controlled him. It hadn’t been something of spirit or body, he’d had neither there. It was purely of the mind.

But what she had done had lasted for moments. Was there a link? What had she said when she broke that fragment? Something about comprehending the Realm. What was there to comprehend about a Realm linked to the Mind?

Maybe he had to look at it another way.

All his life, he had studied the theory of the Realm of Infinite Dreams. It was a Realm wholly controlled by the spirit. Did that mean it had some parallels with how he uses his spiritual arts?

That, he couldn’t answer. His memories of his time there were fragmented. But if he assumed there were? Then maybe the art of the mind had similar parallels to the Realm of Thoughtful Heights?

When he had accidentally arrived in the Realm of Thoughtful Heights, he had protected himself from it within a fragment. If Friend was right, it was to give his mind time to comprehend the Realm. But hadn’t he survived anyway?

How?

He doubted Friend had done anything. She was just poking something to get a reaction, of that he was sure. But what had he done? He’d been blind, unfocused and lost for those moments. Then he had focused on her.

Was that the answer? Focus? Ignoring the unknown and focussing on just one feature at a time? But why did it feel like she had been careful with her words?

Comprehension. Comprehend. She had used that word. To comprehend something was to understand it, to know it intimately. That seemed to fit, right? The mind learned, comprehended new things, and allowed new ideas to form. Was that not a parallel?

That did kind of fit. When you began learning something, you broke it down. Focusing on one thing, learning it enough so you could move on to the next.

The spiritual arts could connect people to one another, and the Realm of Infinite Dreams connected all spirits and was also connected to every spirit seed. So maybe comprehension was the key?

But the key to what. Nimh felt like he was running in circles, not quite knowing what he was chasing. All he knew was that he felt something was missing. Like he had latched onto something important but was missing something obvious.

“I need to get back to the Realm of Thoughtful Heights.” He muttered to himself; Marcus’s rambling lost as he tried to remember how he did it last time.

Obviously, he had been tired. Mentally and physically. Perhaps it was the mental exhaustion that had let him slip into the realm? If the spiritual seed in his spirit well allowed access to the Realm of Infinite Dreams, then maybe something similar existed for the art of the mind?

The only problem was that Nimh had no idea how to begin looking for it. Maybe if a well existed for the mind, then he could, but he didn’t even know how to start finding it. The physical well used vital energy. The spirit well used spiritual energy. Maybe the mind well used mind energy? Focus? Or comprehension.

Hearing Marcus natter in the background, Nimh took a seated position and began emptying his mind. It was a mediation trick he had learned when he was a boy and allowed him to better feel his body and the flow of vital energy.

Lightly, he followed his vital energy as it flowed through his body. Through his bones. Though his flesh. The only place his vital energy did not flow was the small area where Nimh knew his spirit well existed. Which was expected as the energies coexisted but did not merge.

Which inspired Nimh to search for other areas in his body where the vital energy did not flow. After a great deal of time, he found a small location near the centre of his head, roughly between his eyes and at the centre of his skull.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t make the vital energy flow there, filling Nimh with a small amount of anticipation. Letting his sense of his body fade, he concentrated on that one spot.

But nothing happened. He tried poking it with his spirit sense, but that too slipped away from it, like a greasy hand reaching for a smooth ball.

Time passed and Nimh made no progress. He tried counting, doing arithmetic in his head, recounted a hundred languages he vaguely understood and even broke down the components of the ninety-nine forms with painful detail.

But nothing sparked within the space of nothingness. Finally, Nimh just had to admit that he had no idea what he was doing. Then he decided to just do what he had done last time. It would be nice to be able to control his entrance and exist into the Realm of thoughtful Heights, but maybe accidental entry would have to do the trick.

Rising to his feet, Nimh took his position. In his mind, he was back to earlier in the day. Surrounded by F Ranks, the E ranks hiding in the back. He was back to hunting down E ranks in the undercity as he made his way to Stain’s tower.

Breathing deeply, he restricted his flow of vital energy to a mere trickle, his body instantly becoming heavier, his balance more strenuous.

Unlike in his previous training sessions, Nimh did not ease into forms slowly, aiming for accuracy and control. Instead, he struck forward, moving through his forms as he tore through his imaginary foes.

In his mind, he saw attacks and counterattacks and dodged them accordingly. In his mind, he catalogued his missteps and took pains to repeat them until his body flowed through the movement like water in a creek.

For beginners, learning the forms was based on movement. The right movement is placed at the right time and moving into the next. At higher levels, the forms became a part of the practitioner. There was no perfect position, nor perfect timing.

There was only the movement, performed with intent, by a Master of its use.

Marcus’s body was not ready for that level of practice. It certainly was not ready for it with vital energy being restricted. But Nimh pushed forward until his body felt ready to explode.

Then it did.

For the span it took Nimh to move through thirty-nine of the ninety-nine forms, Nimh’s body moved with the force of a flood and the intent of a hunter as his body left his mind behind.

Again, like against the horde of F Ranks, vertigo made the world spin around him. In his mind, three imaginary opponents killed him.

The moment his vertigo faded, Nimh returned to his vital energy-restricted training, pushing himself harder, not letting the vital energy inside him to explode until his body was ready to drop.

At some point, Nimh became aware of a familiar presence entering the training room, watching him. He didn’t look back at her as he trained, the physical strain and the mental exhaustion building.

Time after time he repeated the process, the duration of his vertigo hindering him decreasing as he improved. It was all that Nimh thought about and he lost himself in the simplicity of the forms

He was so deep within his practice, that he didn’t realise when he missed a step, his exhaustion finally catching up to him. He didn’t feel when he hit the floor, nor did he notice when his consciousness faded.

But someone was watching. That someone came into the training, seeing Nimh’s exhausted and prone form. Without sound, she retreated, returning shortly afterwards with a blanket. With care, she draped it over his body.

Then she left, more conflicted than ever.