Understanding

“It was too much,” Naha insisted.

Zach agreed, but he still protested. “We knew that they teach differently than we do. We brought Hiro here because our way of teaching was not bearing fruit. You know that.”

Naha twitched, her fingers tightened on the dagger in her hand.

“He lost an arm,” Naha whispered. “He could’ve died.”

Zach wasn’t about to protest, he had asked Ryun and Anatalien point blank. They had told him that death was always a possibility, that doing what they had done without that risk was pointless. Zach would’ve probably felt better if he hadn’t felt like he was tricked. If he had known why they wanted to seal Hiro’s Class… But the past was in the past, it was already etched into the banks of the River of Time. It was pointless to dwell on it.

“He didn’t,” Zach said instead. “You saw his eyes, he… he is proud of surviving it. Perhaps we have been too… stifling.”

Naha rounded on him. “We protected him.”

“He had confessed to me the feelings of… inadequacy. He feels like he isn’t doing enough. This… no matter what we feel about it, is good for him.”

Naha grimaced and turned away, after a moment her dagger vanished in her storage.

“He is going to be all right,” Zach said as he approached and put his hands around her. “They will push him harder than we could, it will make him stronger.”

She leaned back into him. “I hope so.”

They remained like that for a while, before she stepped away and broke the silence again. “So,” she started. “How is your little pupil doing.”

“Naha,” Zach said.

“What?” She asked, but he knew her well enough to see through it.

Zach didn’t answer, instead he kept a steady gaze on her.

“Fine,” she threw her hands up in the air.

“We have been given the responsibility to train Kri, just as how we have given Hiro to them. Our methods might differ, but that is why we are here in the first place. We were doing Hiro a disservice.”

She sighed and dropped into the seat next to her.

“Now,” Zach continued. “Kri has proven to be a very bright student.”

“I wasn’t—”

“—She has that spark,” Zach interrupted, enjoying Naha’s annoyed expression. “She thrives in assembling information and drawing conclusions, then pushing herself in a direction based on that knowledge. I feel that while she had benefited and advanced under her Sect’s guidance, it was not quite… right for her.”

“If their idea of teaching someone is to throw them in a chasm with monsters, I can see how that might not be… quite right,” Naha added.

Zach smiled. “You must admit that it does provide experience. Though, I do agree that it is not perfect for improvement.”

Both Zach and Naha had improved under such circumstances. But those were instances where it was either that or death. And the results were… they were great and powerful, things that saved them, but they were not perhaps the best that they could’ve been. Zach had always spent time planning and trying to understand the concepts behind his powers, doing that had mitigated the unpredictability of pushing yourself in a moment between life and death.

Zach didn’t believe that either way was wrong, just that some people gained more from one than the other. He had done both, so he felt like he understood enough.

“She asked for my guidance as she advances to Immortal,” Zach added.

Naha tilted her head. “Not Ryun or Anatalien?”

“No,” Zach answered. “I get the sense from her stories that they tend for her to struggle on her own. I don’t disagree with that in principle, but information and guidance do not impede that struggle. And besides, I am interested in seeing a Cultivator advance to Immortal.”

“Of course you are,” Naha said.

“There is knowledge in everything,” Zach said. Her aspect was interesting too. The things that she had spoken to him about did remind him of some aspects that touched on Time, though he was not yet sure in which way.

Regardless, he was looking forward to it.

Kri stood in a small snow covered clearing. Her teacher, Zach, stood a bit away from her. They were in a winter affected territory, as part of her preparation. Much of what she was doing was based on what Ryun and Tali told her. The introduction of items, aspects, and formations, to advancement. The sect had been adopting that as well. It was strange to her just how much the world had changed since she was a child.

Once, advancement was a closely guarded secret. People had to beggar themselves, or spend years in service in order to gain the knowledge and resources for it. The Sect was a lot different now, they were teaching everyone, spreading the knowledge which in turn raised the average tiers of people in the sect up to what had once been considered a great height—the Lord Realm. She knew that the world beyond their sect was changing too. The war against the Dome had changed things, shaken up the ways of doing things that had stood for hundreds of years. She had spoken with Ryun about it and he told her stories of his old world, of how progress worked there. How it had at times stagnated for thousands of years, too, and how sometimes, all it took was a spark for the entire world to surge forward in a matter of decades. It was what they were seeing now, there were several people in the Sect who had Glimpse of their Aspects. All it took was for one to do it and the information to spread. For lessons to be organized and a path made forward.

For the most people this was a good thing, but Kri knew the cost of it. It was not sustainable, at least not as the things were going now. They were burning Essence to help so many advance, though there was a surplus of it available. The war had brought a lot of wealth to the Sect, they had gotten the spoils from the territories they had liberated, and the monster bodies were being sold for a fortune. A lot of the crafters in the sect were even refining them, creating new and powerful concoctions.

But that her mother had told her that it would run out eventually. It was why they were helping people advance so much, why they were expanding so aggressively. The basics weren’t that expensive, teaching someone cost only as much as you had to pay the teacher. But the resources for a solid and grounded foundation of millions of people were… significant.

Kri pushed her mind away from such matters, it was not a problem that was hers to solve. She had enough of her own. She glanced back at her teacher, standing respectfully in silence.

She quite liked his style of instruction, a lot more than Ryun’s and Tali’s if she was being honest. They did try to offer insights, but ultimately they left her to fumble in the dark on her own.

Zacharia spoke about the basics, he explained his own development and offered advice. And he knew a lot more about Aspects. He prepared her for the future better, where Ryun and Tali offered the power that came from knowing that you can survive the unexpected.

And she had started to plan a lot more. Trying to follow in Ryun’s footsteps of discovering new things about Cultivation on her own. A lot of what Zacharia and she talked about was ideas, things that weren’t tested. She might not be as good at Cultivating as Ryun was, but… she did feel drawn to her Aspect, and the idea of what it could become. It was why she had waited to advance to Peak Heavenly until she improved her skills. She wasn’t just preparing for Immortal Realm, she was building the steps that would take her to crafting her own Way of Aspect.

“Is it enough, do you think?” Kri asked finally.

Her teacher looked around the small clearing, at the several formations fitted with Essence Crystals. Most had the Essence of Absolute Cold, but a few had Stillness which she had gotten from Ryun. Her plan for her second Aspect had never changed, only the way in which she wanted to manifest it. The more she talked with her teacher, the more they both believed that guiding how two Aspects interact and what result comes from their merging was possible.

“I know little about Cultivation,” he answered. “But what I do know is that feeling your Aspect deeply is easier when surrounded by its Essence.”

Kri nodded. She had achieved the Glimpse of Absolute Cold in a situation that wasn’t something that she could repeat, not without great risk anyway. Pushing forward and trying to get the Grasp of Absolute Cold had occurred to her, but ultimately she felt like it would be far harder for her. Perhaps for the same reason that Ryun had never gotten the Glimpse of Void. It just… didn’t fit completely. She wondered if that was the main reason why so few people gained those insights. She knew firsthand that most people weren’t able to gain such a deep insight of themselves that matched up with their Aspect. For most, their Aspect was just another tool.

What she did feel like was that she understood the Absolute Cold enough that it would help her connect to what she was feeling inside of herself. It was why she had evolved her skills to be tied to the Aspect of Winter. Because inside she felt like her life was analogous to it.

She had spent such a long period of it alone, isolated from her peers. Watching them advance, while she remained stagnant. Then she surpassed them, and found herself alone again. Often times, it felt like time stood still for her, as if she existed in her own separate world where everyone was cold to her. She knew that it wasn’t the truth, but it was how she felt nevertheless.

Yet she could always hear the whispers, the expectations of others put on her. Everything that surrounded her was filled with so much… noise. Enough that sometimes she just wanted it all to stop. That she wanted the peace that she found when she had glimpsed the Absolute Cold.

The more time she spent with her teacher, the more she felt drawn to the aspects of his power. His mastery of Time was alluring, though she also saw a deep conviction within him that had imposed his will on Time itself, forced it to move always onward.

Kri sometimes wanted the opposite, for Time to slow to a crawl, for everything to just… still.

“I think that I’m ready,” Kri said finally.

Zacharia nodded. “Then start.”