Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 12 - Complexity (Patreon)

“What are you doing?” Alyssa asked, seeming curious.

“If you’re just an expression of my own thoughts, then you already know,” Elijah answered without opening his eyes.

“I am just a figment of your imagination,” she assured him.  “Which means that I’m asking because you think you need to be asked.  Maybe explaining it will help you to establish the parameters of your cultivation.”

“Fine.  I’ll explain it.  Unnecessarily, I might add,” Elijah replied, still focused on the task.  Then, he adopted the same voice he’d employed during his time at the university, when he’d taught a few classes he very much didn’t want to teach.  That was to say that he ventured into a monotonous drone.  “It occurred to me that I was trying to do something my current symbology wasn’t capable of doing.”

“How so?” asked Alyssa.

“A tree is just a tree.”

“Wise words.”

“Shut up.  My point is that a tree can only ever be a tree,” Elijah elaborated.

“Again, your wisdom is staggering.”

Elijah groaned, finally opening his eyes.  His processes continued to run in the background of his mind, but he focused some of his attention on his sister.  Or rather, his mind’s representation of her.

She still wore that same band t-shirt, baseball cap combination that reminded him so much of the day their parents had died.  Yet, her fresh-faced visage was oddly comforting.  It contained youth, exuberance, and an excitement for life that Elijah hadn’t seen since leaving Callux in the Hartwood Grove.

Alyssa definitely hadn’t looked like that when she’d died.  In fact, she hadn’t looked like that since that fateful day, when she’d been forced to grow up far too quickly and confront the realities of life.

And death.

That echo of innocence might have been beautiful if she wasn’t wearing such a smug expression.  Elijah wanted nothing more than to tackle her to the ground and wrestle her the same way they had when they were kids.  Most of the time, Alyssa had won, but that didn’t seem to stop Elijah from repeatedly trying to get the best of his older sister.

“My point is that I’ve kept my scope too narrow.  I think I had to before.  I couldn’t afford to broaden the idea,” Elijah explained like a long-suffering teacher.  “Before, I just focused on idealizing the tree.  You know, leaves, a trunk, roots, branches – that sort of thing.”

“Those are the parts of a tree,” she acknowledged as if he’d just revealed one of the secrets of life itself.

“I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“Anyway,” Elijah went on. “So, I got to thinking – isn’t a tree just another part of a larger concept?”

“Like a forest.”

“Yes,” Elijah answered.  “But more accurately, like an ecosystem.  Trees don’t exist in solitude.  They depend on other aspects of life and nature to flourish. So, I started to think – if I wanted to expand my tree concept into an ecosystem, then what would it look like for the individual aspects of my cultivation.  Specifically, how would I alter my mind to reflect that?”

“More leaves?”

“No,” Elijah answered.  “I don’t need more leaves.”

“Then what?” Alyssa asked.

“I need better leaves,” Elijah stated.  “But it can’t just end there.”

Then, he went on to explain how he’d built the spore cloud surrounding each facet, which was what had given him the idea in the first place.  It was proof that with the proper concept in mind, he could expand his cultivation to include much more than just the base imagery upon which he’d relied for so long.

That had led him to think of nature itself, and how everything existed as a connected part of the whole.  As an ecosystem.  But even those were tied to other ecosystems, in small ways in the micro examination, but in much larger ways when considering everything’s place in a world, then a galaxy, and finally, a universe. 

And those universes were connected to create the multi-verse, which in turn was part of something even larger.

That was what nature entailed.

Not just plants and trees and other living things.  But every single aspect of existence could be distilled down to that simple concept – nature. 

Was he stretching the concept a little? 

Maybe.

“More than maybe, Elijah,” Alyssa said.  “I don’t think anyone else would consider celestial bodies to be part of nature.”

“But it is.  Everything is.”

“So, what?  Are you going to start controlling the stars now?”

Elijah shrugged.

In a way, he’d already done that when he’d created the solar storm during his battle with Ok’tarik.  So long as he thought of it as a storm, basically anything could qualify as falling under the storm frog’s purview.  It was all just an exercise in flexibility for his mind. 

Yet, Elijah recognized that there were limits, some of which came from within.  After all, considering a mountain to be part of a storm required a level of flexibility he could not yet achieve.  However, some of them came from the fact that some parts of the world existed within well-defined boundaries. 

Could he overcome those boundaries?

Perhaps.

But it would take quite a lot of mental training to get to that point.  Even if everything went right, Elijah suspected that his level of authority over some of the fringe definitions of stormhood would be overwhelmed by someone who wasn’t required to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to establish said authority.

“So, how does this relate to your cultivation?” asked Alyssa, bringing him back on track. 

That was another problem.  When Elijah began to consider such huge ideas, he had a habit of forgetting the smaller details. 

“I have to retrain myself to look at things from a broader perspective,” Elijah answered.  “It starts with my cultivation.  I can’t confine myself to tree imagery.  I need to start incorporating other aspects of an ecosystem with each subsequent advancement.  If I can do stick to that plan –”

“You almost never do.”

“I will this time.”

“No, you won’t.  Elijah, I love you, but you’ll just end up chasing rabbits.”

Elijah’s heart leaped into his chest at the turn of phrase.  That had been his mother’s favorite way to describe his tendency to leap from one obsession to another.  One second, he’d be all-in on comic books, and the next, he’d become obsessed with sports.  It had been worse as a child, but the same pattern had continued to haunt him even in adulthood. 

Maybe that was why he’d faceted his mind in the first place.

Sure, back then, it had been a necessity to deal with the overwhelming deluge of information that came with his new senses gained from One with Nature, yet there couldn’t have been a design better suited for Elijah’s tendencies. 

“Maybe I won’t stick to all the details.  I’ll have to figure some of it out along the way,” Elijah admitted once he’d swallowed his emotions.  “Details and whatnot.  But the general idea has merit.”

“I agree,” Alyssa said.

“Which basically means I agree with myself.”

“Or maybe that you think your real sister would agree.”

“If she was still alive,” Elijah muttered to himself, the pain of her passing still sharp even after more than half a century.  He didn’t think he’d ever get over it.

“You’re not supposed to.  For what it’s worth, I think you’re supposed to carry that with you.  Otherwise, did you really love me?” she asked, flicking her eyes in his direction without ever actually looking at him.  It was such a familiar mannerism that it took Elijah’s breath away.

“I don’t know.”

“So, you going to get to it or not?  I’m sure Shelly here doesn’t mind if you sit here for weeks on end, but your companions won’t do well if you leave them alone for too long,” she pointed out.

Elijah couldn’t really argue with that.  While Gunnar could move around Silvara on his own, he was no real match for the wildlife.  Maybe he could kill a beast here and there, but the denizens of the Plane of Nature were far too strong for that to be anything more than an exception to the general rule.

Illska and Ok’tarik were the opposite.  They could win plenty of individual fights, but neither were very proficient in stealth.  Nor did it suit their personalities.  They were big, strong fighters, and trying to fly under the radar just didn’t sit well with either of them.

Neither did hiding in a cave, but that was just another side of the issue.

Either way, Elijah didn’t have the same sort of time he usually devoted to cultivation.  After all, he’d spent months working on his body.  Granted that was a very different sort of conditioning, so mind shouldn’t take as long.

The big difference was that when it came to body cultivation, in addition to breaking it down, he was also forced to slowly condition it to damage.  That was just the nature of that aspect of cultivation. 

With his mind, he would still need to break it down so it could be rebuilt.  That not only took significant damage, but also a good deal of fuel.  The Plane of Nature would provide the latter, but for the former, he was reliant on Shelly.

He didn’t think the giant tortoise would intentionally harm him, but she was also an incredibly powerful creature.  Communing with her was conditioning all its own, and if he dove deep enough, his mind would be entirely overwhelmed by the process.  Too deep, and he would cease to be. 

That meant that Elijah had to thread the needle, going just far enough to get the benefits, but not so far as to completely rupture his identity.

“No pressure, huh?” Elijah asked.

“This is your choice,” Alyssa pointed out.  “You don’t have to do this.”

Elijah shrugged. “We both know that’s not true.  If it wasn’t Shelly, it would be something else.  I can’t stop.”

“You choose not to.”

“Is there a difference?”

Alyssa shook her head. “That’s always been your problem, Elijah.  You think that because you don’t see a choice that one doesn’t exist.”

“If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it really fall?”

“Of course it falls, Elijah.”

“I think I might’ve messed up that saying,” Elijah admitted. “My point is that if I can’t see it, does it really matter?”

Alyssa hung her head and massaged the bridge of her nose.  “You are impossible.”

“I think we both knew that coming into this,” Elijah said. “Besides, I’m doing it.  I don’t need your permission or approval.”

“Just promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said.  “You’re not invincible.  If you go too far…”

“Identity death.  I know.”

“You say that, but your flippant tone says something else entirely,” Alyssa pointed out.

“My tone is almost always flippant,” Elijah countered.

“Isn’t that the truth.  Anyway, you’ve got the idea behind it right?”

“I do.  First step toward an ecosystem,” Elijah answered.

“What about the other thing?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been talking about your identity, right?” she asked.  “You know, the dragon, beast, man, tree thing.  Don’t you think it’s important to cement that so that you don’t…you know…lose yourself when you finally use Hibernate?  Or when you use Shape of Trees?”

“I have a plan for that.”

“Do you?”

“Sort of.  I have the seeds of a plan,” Elijah said.  “I kind of figured I’d…you know…figure it out while I’m in it.”

“Figure it out while you’re in it,” she echoed, with an air of incredulity to her tone.  It was not unwarranted.

“That’s kind of how I do things.  It’s like jazz,” Elijah said.  “You learn to play the trumpet…or whatever.  You learn all the rules and how music is supposed to work.  Then, you just figure it out as you go.”

“I hate jazz.”

“You would.”

“And I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Elijah shrugged.  “I’m not a musician.”

Alyssa took her cap off and ran her hand through her hair, sighing dramatically along the way.  “You are exasperating.  You realize that, right?”

“I’ve been told that once or twice.  Any advice?”

“Don’t lose your mind,” she said. 

“Solid.  Alright.  Now, leave me alone while I solidify my plans,” Elijah said.  “After that, I’m diving in.”