Willow

  Overnight Camp, Feather-branch Forest, Savria

  

  After the harrowing game of chase-the-cowardly pop-hopper boss form, the party had made camp for the night. They returned to the prior area they had planned to make camp, as it was only a ten minute walk back. More pop-hoppers were definitely nearby. The map they’d found had three rough Xs which they suspected to mark hopper campsites, due to one of the Xs being directly where they had found the hoppers they’d fought. At least, they thought it was. It was pretty tough to be sure given how samey the feather-branch forest was. On the bright side, the map did have one major landmark which would be their next destination. They believed the huge circle near the center of the scribbled map indicated the site of another sunsquat tree.

  While Willow would have loved to just rush off to verify the landmark was a sunsquat, she didn’t contest Kent and Naomi when they mentioned making camp. They were both clearly beat after the last days of walking followed by the stress of the fight.

  Honestly, she felt she should be exhausted too. She trained a lot back on Earth, but she didn’t think constant training for shortish bursts of high activity and some running would translate to endless walking followed by an annoying fight which had devolved into something more like tag. Before Kent had found the tracks, she’d actually been planning to ask if the others wanted to take a bit of a break the following day, maybe break camp half way through the day instead of first thing in the morning. Instead, they’d gotten excited and followed the trail immediately.

  She looked toward the tents, all three set up near each other and began making her rounds as she let herself get partially lost in thought. How did she still have so much energy? She knew she would sleep as soon as she laid down and closed her eyes, but she didn’t feel exhausted or even sleepy. The only reason she was sure she’d sleep easily was the fact she’d felt this same way for the last three days. She had a theory about what was going on. In fact it was a theory that she held a high level of confidence was entirely correct. She was pretty sure her mana was helping her. She’d been spending a lot of time playing with it. There wasn’t much else to do as they walked, after all.

  One of the things that she’d noticed was that if she focused and kind of ‘watched’ as her mana regenerated she could ‘see’ some of the mana seemed to be lost. At first, she’d just assumed whatever generation was happening wasn’t perfect and there was some wasted energy, like an engine wasting some energy on heat. Having observed more carefully and doing her best to look deeper.

  Staring into her inner self, she smiled. She was slowly gaining a sense of clarity as to what was going on in her new little inner dojo. The ‘lost’ mana was actually reinforcing the inner building itself. Watching the tiny avatar of herself run drills on the training mat, Willow was pleased by her decision to visualize her mana like this.

  At first she’d been struggling with trying to ‘see’ the slimy, gooey discipline mana, her yet unnamed mana, and each of their “cores.” She had thought that there would be a natural form to the mana, probably a ball which sat somewhere in her spirit relative to her body. That assumption had mostly come from half-remembered lessons by guest instructors who had taught qi, chi, and various other energy techniques. Coach said they were all nonsense, but that the techniques themselves were real and useful. In fact, it was remembering Coach’s scornful eye rolling as one such instructor spoke about ‘pulling the world’s energy in with your breath’ which made her realize the whole thing was a dead end. At least for her.

  Trying to picture her energy as something as foreign and nebulous as energy structures flowing through her body had been exhausting and just hadn’t resonated. Once she had realized she needed to change her approach, she’d experimented a bit.

  She had tried picturing her internal mana in a bunch of different ways. As a computer, a book, a refrigerator, and so on. In the end the thing that had resonated with her had been picturing a little dojo training room. This one wasn’t coach’s dojo, she built her own from scratch. It was currently just a fairly small room, maybe nine by nine meters.

  While she had been building the mental image, it had been fuzzy as most images in her head were. And yet, as soon as she had finished picturing the details: racks of training weapons, mats, paintings, photos, and other decoration, she’d felt the entire thing ‘click’ startlingly into focus. She could now ‘see’ her little dojo room.

  At first, she had thought of the picture she was building as an ‘imagined’ room. After feeling it all settle, though, she didn’t think that was quite right. It definitely felt and looked real when she focused on it - So I might as well assume it is. It also never changed unless she purposefully altered it, unlike any past attempt to visualize something multiple times. She knew her memory and ability to imagine were leagues away from being this perfect and consistent. The last piece of evidence which convinced her it was more than just an imagined space was the fact that she couldn’t make it larger. No matter how she tried, its size simply wouldn’t increase.

  Watching the inner world as she thought through all she’d learned about it, Willow felt like a goddess. She knew every speck of dust and every training weapon hanging a bit crooked. All things considered, she was pleased with her little dojo. She even liked the funny way it represented how much mana she currently had. The less mana she had, the more disorderly the dojo appeared. If she used a chunk of mana to activate her focus she could literally watch the picture frames hanging on the walls gather dust and tilt just slightly. If she kept going, she would notice cobwebs form in the ceiling corners as well.

  The opposite was true as well, she could watch the entire building clean itself up as she regained mana. Once the place was spotlessly cleaned some of the mana even appeared to improve the building beyond cleanliness. The wood floors would gain a polished sheen, the training weapons would become just a bit higher quality, and the structure itself appeared to slowly improve in both appeal and strength.

  There was even something entirely new forming as excess mana gathered, she habitually checked it each and every time she looked within. A vague painted outline depicted a doorway on one of the walls. The outline was barely noticeable, she suspected she would have missed it entirely if she wasn’t hyper-aware of literally everything in this space. She even felt that some of the mana was going to something outside of the dojo itself, but still within her. She thought it was strengthening her body, which was why, she suspected, she wasn’t exhausted like she should be. Instead, she was bursting with energy and ready to keep going!

  Much like the diminutive ghostly sketched version of herself running around her dojo! Look at little me go! I’m so cute! She watched the almost cartoony version of herself as it ran around the room performing various exercises. Anything that didn’t require equipment was game. Push ups, star jumps, jumping jacks, burpees, planks, running laps, sprints, she did them all! She did try to take a weapon from the wall every so often, only for her hand to pass through it. Cartoon-Willow always seemed so disappointed by that.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  This little lady was connected to Willow’s second, yet unnamed, mana aspect. She slowly became less distinct, like an image with its opacity turned down, as that second aspect was depleted.

  Thankfully, once she’d had her ‘click’ moment and explored her inner dojo thoroughly, Willow realized she had a much better instinctive understanding of how much energy she had available. She could roughly estimate how much she could do with it, too.

  Satisfied by her examination, Willow turned to her most recent discovery. Moving her attention ‘into’ the dojo, she found her perspective shift as she stood in front of one of the two windows looking out into a picturesque yard with a pond and manicured garden. She smooshed her face against the glass and turned her face this way and that, catching tantalizing glimpses of the edge of a piece of graffiti art along the wall beside the window. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get a good view as to what it was still. She wasn’t sure why her ability in particular was outside, or why it refused to let her fully view it, but she was satisfied knowing where it was.

  With a slight humph, Willow pulled herself from her inner world. She activated her focus and grinned. She hoped learning about and using her magic never got old.

  

  Madrick

  Adra Vadren’s Command Tent, Adrasmiith Warcamp, Hesvāra

  

  While Madrick would have enjoyed taking additional time off to watch over his one and only disciple, he unfortunately had more important things to do. He was staring at one of the people who demanded these important things get done now. Adra Vadren, commander within the Adrasmiith faction’s ‘royal army’ - called such despite Adrasmiith being a faction rather than a kingdom for not-even-the-gods-knew-what reason - sat behind a large fancy desk and pretended not to notice Madrick.

  Ahhh the political games. How I haven’t missed you. Madrick tuned out the world, glancing briefly into his soul nexus. The endless skirmish within his soul continued unabated. The glory of the eternal battle had been diminished, but not extinguished, by his death. Thinking about the manner in which he had died unsettled his soul nexus, the soldiers all becoming enraged as the conflict escalated as if the war had just begun and passions were high and their blood still boiled. He watched for a moment before forcibly calming himself. Wasting mana by letting his emotions run rampant was counter productive.

  Instead, he focused his anger into a needle of cold ice which he would use later. That ice set into his soul nexus, the soldiers began to grow lethargic and weakened. This would temper them, they would need to learn to overcome the elements. He relived the final moments of his godhood. He watched as his best friend and his most favored lover, walking on his right and left side respectively, suddenly struck. The action had been coordinated, decisive, and utterly without warning. Madrick still felt Cheru’s karambit, the thin excessively curved blade she preferred, slide in through his back and directly into his heart. That itself wouldn’t have been enough to slay him, of course. The poison, along with his treacherous former friend Baāleth’s massive hand-axe cleaving his head from his neck the very next instant, had barely been sufficient.

  Madrick felt the fire of rage descending into his soul nexus again and once again forced it to coalesce into an icy form of fury. The sound of a cleared throat brought Madrick’s focus out of his introspection. He noticed, with amusement, that the battle fervor mana which had leaked from him in his anger had ignited Adra’s ire. As one of the many humans who despised the Glavi on principal, Madrick was more than happy to inconvenience this one.

  The voice of the small, weak, dry, grey-skinned creature almost seemed to contain a hint of emotion due to the influence of Madrick’s mana, “It appears you have come, as my superior promised.” Despite almost having emotion, the Glavi’s voice was still the same monotone and lifeless one shared by all of its kind.

  “It appears you’re here as well. Just as your superiors promised.” Madrick was trying for dry, channeling as much of Ki’ai’en’s understated wit as he could. It still came out more sarcastic and angry than anything. Ah well, he’d tried. Dry wasn’t really his style anyway.

  Adra steepled its fingers together, resting its skin-and-bone elbows on the desk it sat behind and stared at Madrick with its pupilless, scleraless, void-like eyes. He stared back without moving, aside from his foot tapping and his right fingers slapping against his crossed forearm as he waited impatiently. He hated these kinds of stupid games. What’s more, he didn’t have to put up with them. He was only doing so now because the Adrasmiith had something he wanted. They’d made a deal to give it to him, assuming he took care of their little problem.

  After counting to thirty, the stupid Gravi still hadn’t gotten to the point. Fuck it. Madrick turned around, “Fine, I’ll find what I need elsewhere.”

  “Please remain.”

  He looked back over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, “Tell me the problem I’m here to solve. Quit playing your idiotic power games. We both know who has the power here.”

  The narrow nose-slits of the Gravi flared ever so slightly. Likely it was feeling actual anger for one of the few times in its life. Madrick, and more importantly the mana he’d inadvertently released into the air, tended to cause that.

  “We have been given this planet to do with as we wish. We are unable to do as we wish. This is due to the haunted.”

  With a snort, Madrick turned around and walked back over to look down at Adra as he waited to hear more.

  “Spirits appear. They are between rank nine and rank thirteen. They are most prevalent within the battle sites. The battle sites are what the Adrasmiith is interested in. We need the spirits removed.”

  Grinning, Madrick nodded, “Certainly something I’d be more than happy to help you with. First though, what the hell do you mean by spirits? Elemental? Reanimated corpses?”

  “No.” The Adra answered in a now fully disimpassioned tone, “Fully autonomous energetic beings. They are ghosts. They take the form of their former selves. They retain their spells. They retain their abilities.”

  “Impossible. The soul and attached soul nexus return when a being is slain. When monsters are slain their energy is either absorbed by their slayers, or it’s condensed into a core. There’s no such thing as a ghost for either.”

  “And yet. We have evidence. We have seen.”

  “Bah, so this isn’t going to be as simple a job as ‘go kill that army’, is it?”

  “Unlikely. We have destroyed the spirits. Many times. They return.”

  Groaning, Madrick turned and left the tent without further questions. He’d go check these “ghosts” out himself. Hopefully the Adrasmiith warriors were simply incompetent and had failed to fully kill whatever “energetic beings” they had encountered. Madrick himself would hardly fail at his favorite task, he’d just have to check the claim that they came back after being killed personally.

  Having destroyed a few hundred ‘spirits’, Madrick sat atop a grassy mound which he was fairly certain had once been a massive pile of bodies which hadn’t been buried or burned. Nature was always the victor in these battles, in the end. Unless Madrick had been present, then he was the victor. He chuckled, in a good mood after a decent fight.

  The spirits had come in the form of hundreds of different races, all of them beings which had come from tutorials. His working theory was that one or more of the warriors which had participated in this battle had a path of shared, or maybe forced, vengeance. They might have had a technique which activated upon death to create these odd ghosts. True ghosts, he knew, were simply not possible. The spirit of the departed was a known quantity, they could not linger when they were immediately collected on death.

  Deciding taking a break called for a quick check on his disciple, Madrick looked through Willow’s activity feed. He was a bit surprised to see several alerts that she had altered her soul nexus. She had altered it many times. He saw a total of forty alterations. A smile slowly spread across Madrick’s face. Generally, changing ones soul nexus was a horribly difficult process which required extreme concentration to an existing nexus and create a new one. Yet it appeared his disciple could change it tens of times in a single day. Interesting. He wondered if she even knew what she was doing. He would wager that she had no clue.

  Continuing on, he saw an alert that she had entered battle. He replayed the recording and laughed so hard he fell off his hill.

  TOO perfect? Clearly he has no flaws and everyone and everything in the universe must only bow to his whims, because they're the only whims that could possibly matter! ??