9-68. Stillness
Instinct is an interesting concept. Most of the time, it functions as it’s meant to, running in the background to ensure a person’s survival. Other times, it drives a man forward into an elemental storm before which most sane people would flee. Not as some ephemeral survival mechanism, but rather, because it is convinced that what that person needs can only be found amidst such life-and-death struggle.
Such was the case with Elijah.
He was well aware that plunging ahead into the Elemental Maelstrom had been a bad idea. Every rational thought screamed that reality into his mind. He should have turned back, but his instincts had driven him forward. They weren’t deterred by logic or pain. Every second of agony had served to cement his resolve, spurring him forward with implacable and undeniable determination.
Or at least that had been the case until he could go no further. That was when he’d imbibed the potion he’d taken from Breeze. Biggle had identified it as a healing potion, and one with an incredible degree of efficacy. Still, Elijah was briefly shocked by the surge of vitality that came on the heels of its consumption. It flooded his body, mending damage even more quickly than his trio of healing spells.
What’s more, it was an ongoing effect. According to Biggle, it would last no more than five minutes, but in that time, Elijah hoped to gain ground on the concept of stillness that he’d been working so hard to achieve.
So, he sank within himself, bringing his ethera to a halt. His body went lax, and he collapsed. Limp and lifeless, he didn’t resist as the swirl of wind-driven ethera picked him up and sent him tumbling across the terrain. He never went far before an errant gust changed his direction, but he completely ceded control to the elements.
They ripped him to pieces even more fiercely than ever before.
Fire burned his skin while razor-sharp wind peeled his flesh from his bones. Water, ice, and sand pelted him, and ethera suffused his entire body.
He ignored it all.
Pain was his long-tenured and nearly constant companion. He’d embraced it long ago, and not as some evidence of masochism. Rather, he knew it was inevitable. Without it, advancement was impossible. There were no gains without significant sacrifice. The days when he could attain anything worthwhile without putting himself through the wringer were long past.
That was just how the world worked.
He’d only truly embraced it in his quest for a bronze body, but even before that, he’d subconsciously accepted that reality. Even so, he felt every burn. He experienced every single cut. He couldn’t isolate himself from the torment that came with being skinned alive by elemental forces.
The only solace was that the potion did its work, keeping him alive even if it did nothing for the pain.
Elijah was well aware that there were alchemical concoctions – cultivation potions, they were called – that could numb the body against such conditions. But he felt that doing so would cheapen the experience and harm the result.
And Elijah had no interest in doing things halfway.
With that in mind, he sank into himself, stilling his mind before halting the ethera in his body. It was an odd feeling, and the calm within contrasted perfectly with the storm raging outside.
Elijah still didn’t know the way forward. He’d progressed to the point where he could hold his ethera dormant for days at a time. However, with the potion steadily ticking down, he knew he didn’t have much longer before he would be forced to heal himself.
Or die, ripped to shreds by the Elemental Maelstrom.
Even the two glyphs he’d received were insufficient to protect him. Aegis of the Elements helped, but Elijah suspected that it would need a couple of evolutions if he wanted it to be capable of shielding him against such potent effects.
Panic set in, but he shoved it aside so he could focus on the task at hand.
It wasn’t enough to simply achieve stillness. He knew that from the guides. But that was where their advice ended. As one progressed through the stages of cultivation, the process became increasingly personalized. And with Elijah’s case, that was truer than with most others.
He was a Druid without a mentor. A dragon without a heritage. A man who, only a handful of years before, had no concept of ethera or cultivation. He should never have made it as far as he had. But now, he found his way blocked by a wall formed from his own ignorance.
He battered at it with stillness, opening the apertures of his mind to drink in the dense ethera of the maelstrom. He filled himself to bursting, and in doing so, he came to a realization. It wasn’t just the amount of ethera he could hold, but rather, the quality as well. And with that density came an epiphany.
Suddenly, he felt the inefficiencies inherent in the system of channels he’d so arduously carved. He knew he didn’t have time to fix it. Nor was that the purpose of his current step. Instead, the next stage of soul cultivation was about control. So, he pushed those notions aside, filing them away for later.
He continued to pull ethera in, but with nowhere to go, it pushed him closer to an explosion that he would not survive. All the while, his body was ripped apart and tossed around.
It was only when the vitality from his potion began to wane that yet another realization dawned. Latching onto it, he embraced the ability he’d unlocked via the last stage of soul cultivation and extended his essence outside of his body. The second he did, spirit-deep pain scorched its way through him as those bits of his soul frayed before the elemental might of the storm.
But Elijah pushed through the pain, constantly shoving more of his soul into the maestrom. It was a stark contrast to the stillness within, though one he couldn’t appreciate amidst the agony.
Then, something snapped.
For a split second, he couldn’t hold the ethera within, and it exploded from him in an eruption of dense energy. His branching soul flowed with it, reaching dozens of feet in every direction. In that brief instant, he knew peace. The power of the storm receded, and he hung suspended in mid-air.
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True stillness.
Within and without.
It shattered after only a second, and the backlash very nearly sent him spiraling into unconsciousness. Without his recent advances in levels and body cultivation, he probably would have succumbed. However, he barely managed to hang on, and in doing so, he realized precisely what he needed to do.
It wasn’t just about stillness.
Instead, a duality was necessary. On the one hand, he needed to flood himself with ethera, then funnel it outward into the extensions of his soul. But on the other hand, he needed to enforce quiescence via the sheer power of his soul.
Elijah poured himself into the effort, using his previous experiences – and extensive training – to enforce his will. He dragged ethera through the apertures of his mind, then shoved it through the channels of his soul. But he didn’t stop at the limits of his own body. He kept going, once again spreading those conduits outward until they surrounded him like an ethereal root system.
It formed a perfect sphere, inside of which he could feel everything. The maelstrom attempted to rip it to pieces, but so long as he continued to pour ethera into it, it maintained its integrity.
Gradually, those channels solidified.
And in doing so, the focus of Elijah’s will grew wider. At first, it only extended a couple of inches from his body, but with every passing second, it expanded until it encompassed the entire web of ethereal channels surrounding him.
He fell, slamming into the ground with enough force to shatter the terrain for dozens of feet in every direction.
But he felt nothing of it. Instead, he could only marvel at the peace he’d instilled all around him. No wind. No fire. No water or hunks of rock. The ethera remained perfectly still, inside his body and in a sphere stretching a dozen feet into the environment.
In some ways, it felt like a domain, but with far more control. The locus surrounding his grove was focused on information. He knew everything within that domain, intimately and at all times. This was different, though. It didn’t give him the same breadth of information, but what it lacked in that arena, it more than made up for in control.
Right now, the only expression of that control was holding the ethera around him perfectly still, but he sensed that as he expanded his soul cultivation, that would change. But for now, it required every ounce of focus he possessed to keep it in place.
Still, it was the only thing keeping him alive, because the potion had long since run its course. The lack left his body ravaged, but he completely ignored it. Instead, he kept his attention – all available facets of his mind – on maintaining the aura of stillness. He kept it going for hours. Then days.
Anywhere else, and he likely would have desaturated the atmosphere of its ethera. However, the maelstrom was like an infinite battery that fueled his cultivation like nothing else could. Even the grove’s ethera was finite. The urgency provided by the Elemental Maelstrom was even more important. Without it, he never would have figured it all out.
Even now, Elijah struggled to maintain focus, especially with how ravaged his body had become.
Yet, he did just that, and as the days passed, he felt his branching soul solidify. The process was slow, but thanks to his Regeneration, the pain in his body slowly receded. Then, after another week, he felt it all coalesce.
He didn’t need the notification to know that he’d reached his goal, but he acknowledged it anyway:
| Congratulations! Your Soul has reached the Expert Stage.
|