Simply creating a mental construct for mutagens was not enough to actually partake in them. The body had to be prepared, the mutagens administered, and finally, the spirit was bound to them. Three parts, each a trial unto their own.

The Trial of the Grasses was what prepared the body and made it receptive to mutation. The mixtures of both mutagenic and psychoactive compounds were apt to send anyone into a feverish hellscape borne from their darkest fears. Both body and mind were turned into a chaotic mess, being partially melted into progenitor cells to act like clay.

And since the Trial was not only physical and chemical but also spiritual, it affected the psyche more strongly than if it was singularly material in nature. The physical and ethereal counterparts resonated with each like temple bells, creating a sound greater than the sum of their individual parts. It was a multiplicative endeavor rather than simple addition.

Eiden could still feel the effects of the first Trial on his mind. He was slightly impaired, even inside the mental realm. A feeling of wrongness overcame him like a flood. Yet, something inside himself felt more potent for it. Like being long without comfort, the psyche adapted to the undesirable circumstances, hardening and forming a mental callus. If not for his prior experience with mental torpors and resistance to their effects, Eiden would’ve surely died, passing away into raving insanity or indefinite comatosity.

Around a quarter of all Vitaen exorcists passed through the crucible that was the Trials. Yet, rarely did any apprentice die, for they took years beforehand to prepare themselves. It was a race against time where risk and reward were weighed, for if one passed puberty in earnest, they could not take the Trials. The body would be too changed already—malleable clay was needed, and those that entirely completed puberty were hardened like stone. Not even the reversion compounds that turned defined cells back into their progenitor or stem form would be enough.

Exorcists were divided into two main branches, those that delved into Fate itself and those that modified their bodies through the Trials. Though, it wasn’t necessarily as clear-cut as every exorcist had some sort of fatalistic wizardry. Those that could not partake in the Trials instead plunged their minds into the depths of Fate and the Source Beyond the Veil.

Eiden’s undeveloped corporeality was a blessing hidden beneath a curse. His chronic malnutrition had delayed and slowed his bodily development. Even now, a full year after apprenticing under Fin, he barely had any hair other than the brown mop atop his scalp. He could not grow a beard, and not even whiskers or shadows of them were present. His height was a full head beneath most, and his facial features boyish.

The sorcerous awakening had also become a latent boon as it renewed his corporeality in a subtle manner. His body had been returned to a pliable state to receive hormones and properly grow. Ever since he left Arvenpyre, he had been on a steady dose of hormonal blockers to stop any growth before he was adequately prepared.

I’ll finally be a normal height. Ain’t gonna look like a wee tyke anymore. Might even get a beard.

A grin appeared on his face as he sat down to wait. The Trial of the Grasses would take a whole day to finish. And he had a few other things to take care of.

Chief among them were of the mundane variety. Eiden wanted to revisit memories his mind had long since tucked away. Shadowed things that he dared not meddle in before as they could have spelled his end. The resurgence of mental trauma would have amplified the difficulty of the first Trial. Instead of being exposed to something he could endure and become stronger for, he would’ve been turned into a rambling catatonic.

Insanity and amnesia was the response of the consciousness when under too much pressure. It locked away the logical and reasonable cognition to heal while leaving a broken shard of itself to handle imminent survival. The Three Doors by Kvetch Ruh Rotvuoz was an excellent source of knowledge about how a mind functioned and bore its unseen scars. Eiden had devoured that book and its successor, The Sleeping Mind. He excitedly awaited traveling with Fin to Vitae to get his hands on the latest volume, The Thrice-Locked Chest.

Eiden shook his head, clearing away the thoughts. He could get excited about books another time.

He closed his eyes, his sight cutting away from the omniscience of the mental realm. He no longer saw through the darkness like some hidden god, his perception confined to his mental form. And more specifically, his spirit body.

He felt his heartbeat slow and steady and his lungs expanding and contracting as his diaphragm increased or decreased internal pressure. Insight hit him as he finally understood the intermediary arcana for his powers: Pressura. The word itself was Vitaen in origin, written in a large branch of the right path of Ordos of his Inner Gate. His control over air was not simply atomic vibration. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to form wind spheres. It had a component of pressure. When he used his cerulean flames, he also created a pressurized shell around them to keep the energy contained within and in the form of an orb. Though, this did not extend to his cursed arcana. Scarlet flame held itself together like blood, the cohesion of each molecule building and compounding upon each other. In that sense, it was a living flame, ravenous filaments of sanguinai and vorai bound together like worms.

The arcana of pressure was much more instinctual to himself than Eiden thought possible. It was the middle-man of ebb and flow, for, without it, the tithe and take would not hold sway.

It was the cerulean hand of oppression incarnate. It held together all under the sky, anchoring them to the firmament of Terra. Yet it was a derivative aspect, for something else came before. Something much more primal and core to existence itself.

Gravity.

But, Eiden’s epiphany ended there. He had no control over spatial folds or to increase weight upon space-time fabric. He had some middling skill in the Ethereal Planes, bending and folding them and whatnot, but that was it. The prime-material was out of his grasp. He had no affinity for the arcana of gravity, at least not in its entirety.

Some tomes on pressure and some books on aeromancies might do him some good, he reckoned. To ignore a spark of insight was folly, but he could not follow up on it at present. There were no books other than those inside his memories, but none really dealt with what he wanted. Some pyromantic treatises like the one by Novigorod and perhaps even the Common Essencia had something he wanted, but it would all be surface-level knowledge. He needed specifics.

So, Eiden returned to meditating again, preparing to delve into his past. His breath came in till his lungs felt like bursting, almost suffocating his heart. Then, he released the air until there was nothing left.

The Empty Breath.

His breath came and went until time held no meaning, for he focused not on the whims of presence upon a singular line. When meditating inside the mental plane, space was obsolete, and Aetheon powerless. Instead of a thread that bound past to past, present to present, and future to future, the mind was a web, stretching in all directions.

Eiden’s perception was an inverted spirit-spear, piercing ever deeper into the self. First came the image of his middle-spirit, his etheric half. Three vortexes of flowing energy, boundless and mesmerizing like irises of long-forgotten titan-gods. The energy flowed in channels of steel, each reservoir encased in argent armor fit to resist the arcane.

Eiden focused deeper still with his spirit-sight till he saw what lay in between ether and nether.

Enetheric bindings, sympathetic spirit-lashes, connected body to ether. Since he was first awakened by sorcery, his sight was uncanny. He saw not only flesh and spirit but also the web in betwixt that bound them together. A weave of mana. It was not arcana yet, but instead, subtle mana not usually sensed by most spiritualists. At such a point, it was as much wizardry as spiritry, a hybrid of both.

The mageling’s sight focused on a dense mass of bindings of the spirit, a subtle mana organ. The Eye of the Mind, a brain-like construct made of transparent, hollow tubes knotted together in a facsimile of the flesh.

Gossamer threads spread outwards inside the spirit-organ. From cores, like glass that held lightning, came tendrils. Core connected to core, creating amalgam constructs, not unlike logic gates used in artificing. Yet, Eiden saw no color. Instead, his sight was like that of his auric sense of Empathy. It was weight and pressure and space like he was touching the recesses of his brain with thousands and thousands of fingers. The internal, spiritual “sight” was entirely alien to him. He had no practice delving so deep inside a particular part of the body. Before, he only saw the mind as a vortex of flowing energy filled to the brim with fuel to be burned for magic. He only saw the etheric half.

Today, he saw the truth. The mind was a web made from a thousand-thousand stars bound by fulgurite gossamer. Lightning spread from the cores to the arms and bodies of each singular neural cell, releasing clouds of some substance not unlike nebulas when the electric charge reached the end of an appendage. The visage was alien and otherworldly, millions of eldritch beings freely floating and communing with each other.

Maybe the stars and nebulas are minds themselves. Perhaps that’s why a Wellfontian Constellation is called such. They form arrays of sorts, repeating patterns that bind and conjure.

Eiden stowed the thought for a later time. Ruminations were like the incessant buzz of flies fluttering about. It would only take away his focus.

To delve inside the mind, one needed an arachnid's chittering and delicate dexterity to unravel anything of meaning. Tentatively, Eiden touched the threads with a mental hand. Upon each touch, remembrance struck him like lightning, a jolt running through his spine. Images flashed and flooded, drowning them in their intensity as bright lights like auroras burned his mental sight.

Quickly, he retracted the mental prodding, unmeshing himself from the unnatural meddling. There was another reason he hadn’t done this before. The mind was not meant to be interacted in such a way by the waking consciousness. This was the territory of the sleeping psyche, and Eiden was playing with fire.

It would not be the first time nor the last. If one was not meant to touch upon the flames, then why were they so tantalizing? So...

Beautiful.

Eiden reached back, thousands of mental fingers connecting to myriad neurons, as they were called in most anatomical studies. Touching a single neurotic core didn’t do much, but different patterns of them sparked unique memories and sensations. It all bubbled down to a single condensate: patterns. He had to find specific arrangements of neurons, timing the activation of each to get a coherent vision instead of a fever dream.

Eiden continued forth, patiently untangling the knots that bound veils over his recollection. He could not conjure the specific memories otherwise. His sleeping mind would fight him. It had denied him again and again, scared he would fracture under the weight of the past. Eiden had fought off a godling of blood before. Even if it was just an avatar of the arcane, it still carried its power. His soul was still his. And so was his memory.

Lightning coursed through the synaptic tendrils, again and again, furthering his mastery and understanding of connections and of the arcana and weave of mind and fulgur. Leaps and bounds were made, his visions finally holding semblances of logical continuity.

Eiden had to choose neural patterns not only close to each other but also ones that spanned the whole entirety of the mind. Riddles wrapped in mystery, tangled like adamant sailor knots, and hidden behind the enigmatic workings of consciousness.

Without the past experience of generating and manipulating psykosis and his mental affinity in general, Eiden would not have the confidence to meddle in what he did.

But, perhaps that was not so true. Eiden would entrench himself in things he barely understood but not out of naivety. But the opposite. To understand the world and reality itself, he had to take risks. Some undoubtedly more fatal and dangerous than others, but not any less rewarding.

And a reward did he unearth, or so he thought. If only he knew it was instead a curse hidden behind a perceived blessing.

Finally, after a thousand-thousand attempts. After countless patterns enacted, Eiden found what he looked for. The memories were hidden behind a weird barrier of sorts. Whenever he naturally tried to recall them, the mental blockade actively removed his attention and dissolved the strands. But, since he was not naturally recalling memories this time and instead artificially doing so with magic, he found barely any resistance.

He gingerly touched the neurons, sparking lightning through their synaptic connections.

Trauma long since hidden away came into his mind’s eye. Their weight was a catalyst, causing a cascading reaction to unearth further memories connected to them. A single unravelling of a knot made a rotten ship crumble.

This part is to be rewritten, but as it’s draft 1 and apocryphal, I won’t rewrite it until draft 2 gets to this point in the story.

Here’s a mini abridged version of it:

Eiden was the son of minor Arvenpyrean nobility that overstepped their bounds. They get killed, he gets thrown in captivity. He escapes, killing the lynchpin lordling behind his parent’s murder.

[The man was dead, and the boy was not.

[The memory turned black, picking up again some time later. It was night and frigid. Through the cold, winter streets, the boy ran till the sun came upon a grim dawn, and his bare feet were bloody from the frost. Slowly, the hunger gnawed at his insides, turning him shambling and weak.

[First was his body, second was his mind. Yet, the third, his spirit, was not yet cowed. He lingered still.

[His mind fractured, the weight of it all too much for him to bear. The memories slowly locked themselves away for him to better focus on scavenging and survival. After days of sleeping in forgotten corners and running from guards, the local militia finally caught him. They threw him down the tunnels to be forgotten. Dross and trash and garbage were not meant for the light of day, they told him.

[Winters came and went, his quick wits and unbending will keeping him barely fed. The Undercity was home. And now, he was no longer alone. He picked up a brother, a lad bigger than himself but more child than man, as he had a lame head. The boy taught and protected his newfound brother. The boy had even found himself a name, though he remembered not who gave it to him or how he got it.

[Eiden.]

The name was like a brand, burning itself onto his mind. Behind it was truth and power untold. It was the true nature and being of himself, condensed unto the utterance of breath.

Eiden’s mind came alive as his name rebounded and echoed through the mental realm. A thousand-thousand voices, of sadness, of anger, of joy, of suffering, of every single possible emotion came from everywhere and nowhere at all. The voices surrounded him, uttering the same word. The same name.

Eiden.

The name shifted ever so slightly, shedding away slivers of corruption and untruth until a True Name was left behind.

Aedan.

His heart beat strong like steel, his iris shining silver. Azure runes inscribed themselves unto the metallic sheen of his eyes. Through the omniscience of the mental realm, Eiden saw the eldritch script, their meaning coming to him like whispers in the wind.

Claíomh chun arrachtaigh agus solas a mharú chun na daoine caillte a threorú.

[A blade to fell monsters and light to guide the lost.]

A stirring came from his soul, his high-spirit condensing into steel. An orb of metal was left floating in the black of the mind. Cracks, imperceptible to the sight before, burned now with azure flame. Slowly, the orb came undone, turning into molten steel and leaving behind a blue spark.

A blade materialized out of the molten steel, dragging itself up from the slag, reforged through hardship and tribulation. The metal wrapped around the soul construct, becoming the vessel for its essence. It shimmered like water, its surface like damascene steel taken white-hot from the Heavenly Forge.

Runes of spectral cerulean blue burned with fury, etching themselves onto the centerline of the sword. A single line rent the blade in two with slashes bisecting it horizontally that signified sigils. As Eiden looked upon the ancient glyphs, they looked back upon him.

Whispers entered his mind, alien and foreign their tongue, yet he understood the words quickly enough.

When gods fall, you are the arbiter. When powers unchecked wreak havoc, you are the sword that cuts them down. Their penance shall be the eternal black. Bring inexorable doom to the monsters of this world. All that walks through the Veil-in-Between shall be dragged back to the Pale. The baleful dead and the evil men that roam the earth shall be judged, for their sins shall be reaped in double.

May the Helwatcher and Greyen Arbiter of Samhain be named.

Aedan, Sword of Retribution.

The light that shrouded the shimmering sword dimmed, revealing the relic beneath. It was a shortsword. Its guard was practically non-existent, fusing with the handle to form a cross with barely enough space for a hand to grip it. Blue runes glowed upon its surface in ancient draotic script.

Druidic sigils hailing from the Alder folk of Northern Free-Kedwen.

The artefact emanated unbelievable power, waves of it washing over Eiden. He felt the blade connected to an external source, not entirely within or without. Eiden followed the tendril, questing to its origin, yet found himself lost in the ethereal realms. Too many bends and turns, and his mental energy was already spent.

The revelations of today made his past much more clearer, but they did not come without cost. Eiden felt turbulent and lost, a strange sort of malaise.

Everything feels wrong.

It also explained why his earliest soul-dream had incorporated his five-winters-old form into its dreamscape. It was the lowest point in his existence, occupied by only suffering and the chasing of revenge.

It seemed the Fates were vicious beings. If taking his first family was not enough, they deigned to take his second set of loved ones.

No more.

The thought rebounded through the mental realm, causing the azure runes of the Sword of Retribution to burn brighter. Eiden gripped the blade, its silvery luster fitting perfectly in his hand. It vanished into his mortal soul, fusing with the animus within. Eiden felt it floating somewhere near the core of his chest.

The Sword beckoned to him, instinct and unspoken knowledge suffusing his mind. He only needed to call upon it, and the blade would come.

A strange sort of wizardous conjuration that dwells in the spirit. Well, more like the whole damn ethereal body. It’s like a… serpent. The sword’s wrapped around my Heart of the Bodies, drawing ether from it.

Eiden called upon the sword, evoking it from his spirit. It materialized, phase-shifting from ethereal to physical. At an active state, the blade drew an inordinate amount of both aether and ether.

It doesn’t hurt my corporeality, but that mana drain is enough to weaken my projection techniques. Like any sort of pull, it weakens the force of etheric expulsion. I'll have to channel my projections through the sword. Add to the fact that it has its own pull like a spiritual basin, it'll act as a sort of amplifier, like a bow or sling.

Eiden channeled Winter' Breath through the conjuration. Hoarfrost coated the surface of the blade, wintery fire dancing around its form. The runes shone neveian white.

The sword itself was an extension of Eiden's spirit, having its own meridians and subtle musculature to expel mana through.

A wayward swing of the artefact sent a crescent wave of etheric ice forward. The speed was much higher than using only his body.

Eiden looked down at the sword, dispelling the arcane aspect.

Aye, this'll do. This'll do.

Eiden used the remaining hours before the Trial to recuperate. The memory scouring took only an hour, so he still had quite a lot of time left to recover.

Yet, Eiden couldn’t find peace. How could it, after learning so much. He didn’t remember much about his parents, only that he loved them. And he dared not meddle again with his psyche so quickly after all… that. It had proven strenuous, to say the least.

Since the Empty Breath did nothing for him, Eiden started practicing his Forms. He couldn’t get himself to call out to Fin, some odd mixture of feelings stopping him from doing so. He couldn’t tell if it was shame, or fear, or whatever else. Eiden just didn’t feel ready. Didn’t feel like returning to that dark past. Relieving it was like ice-cold water poured directly onto the back.

Distinctly uncomfortable.

The mageling stood above the grey waters of his mind. Form sequences ended and began again and again. Cat’s Paw to Fowl’s Eddy and finally Serpent’s Cauldron, the pattern repeated.

He struck out, etheric winds blowing from his palm. He deflected, warping the Ether to bend force itself. And finally, he called upon his soul-forged steel to harden the heel of his hands, turning them into deadly bludgeons.

In between bouts of martial practice, Eiden read through his tomes, conjuring them from memory, though it strained him to do so. Anything to keep him from his thoughts was a boon, even if it hurt a bit to do so. The feeling of a psychic stab to the brain was nothing when compared to his dark ruminations.

Silence was violent.

Through his studies, he tried to gain some understanding of his new power, the Greyen Sword. The magic relic was connected to some sort of wizardry, specifically Naming—a subset of mysticism that condensed the essence of things in the form of seals. A True Name was the key to the soul of a being, be they inanimate or animate. It gave one the reigns over that which they knew the Name of. In Eiden’s case, he found the essence of his nature.

Or something like that, he couldn’t entirely tell himself. The artefact could be conjured easily enough. All he had to do was call upon it, and in a coruscating wave of argent filaments, the Sword materialized. It was surprisingly quick and easy, which gave him pause. Eiden was not that good with Forging, at least not yet. He couldn’t make mana constructs so… fluidly and without blemish. And certainly not this fast without years of visualization and practice.

Maybe the sword has a matrix or mindshard responsible for maintaining and remembering the shape?

Eiden knew he should tell Fin, but he couldn’t find the courage at this juncture. Maybe some other time he’d scrounge the will to do so. The thought made Eiden snort a laugh. He had no fear of fighting to the death, yet when it came to exposing himself to others and trusting them, he was as fearful as a kitten.