B6 Chapter 689: Mindful Night (Patreon)

A bank of overlapping leaves barred the path ahead, courtesy of a woven wall of tightly coiled creepers that stretched for leagues in either direction. It wasn’t Kaius’s first time encountering the strange plant that seemed dead set on segmenting entire swathes of the canopy like demented curtains, but he always felt nervous approaching it. 

It was just a plant, but the dense mat of deep-green leaves and lemon-yellow blooms completely cut off his view. Anything could be hiding beyond.

Swinging his blade, he cleaved through the barrier — and revealed a deluge of sunlight. Just a quarter-league ahead, one of the jungle giants had met its end, collapsing into a chaotic tangle of deadwood, shattered branches, and scattered leaves. It left a gargantuan hole in the canopy.

The largest branches of the giant had planted themselves into the crystal sands like the columns of some macabre temple, its slowly yellowing leaves draping into an obscuring blanket that cut off the view of the ground below.

Kaius was surprised to see it seemed to be clinging to life. If the tree had fallen recently, they would have heard even from fifty leagues away.

“Hey check that out!” Kenva said, pointing to a sheltered branch hidden just within the fallen crown of the giant.

Easily fifty strides thick, the branch had grown a kink close to the trunk of the tree. Now tipped over, it created a wide and flat shelf.

“Seems like as good a place as any to make camp,” Kaius said. “Been way too long since we got a proper sleep.”

They really didn’t need all that much anymore, just a few hours a night. Even then, it would have been easy to push it off for days — but it would have slowed them down, just a hair. Given the ferocity of the fights they took, staying in the best condition they could manage in the field was important.

….

The night was alive with the rustle of insects and the distant call of night birds singing drawn out tunes that carried through the jungle. A warm, dry wind blew across their camp, rustling through the tapestry of wilting leaves that sheltered them from the desert-jungle outside. 

Kaius sat cross-legged with his back to the slanting trunk that jutted overhead, barely aware of the world around him. Each breath was slow and steady, a driving beat as his focus remained honed on the churning fires within.

Deep within his hidden centre, his soul roared with potency. His aspects pulsed with excitement, as iron Will guided his cycling. Essence rose from his soul-fire, guided through the tightly constrained loop he had discovered during their trip to the Wellspring. 

All around him, the environmental essence of the Shardworld was pulled in by the crushing pressure of his Authority, flowing around him like an eddying stream. 

Within, his own essence swelled from the proximity of so much similar power. Each mote was heartier, burning brighter than he’d ever seen before, and they came swift and often. Progressing his Refinement was still a challenge.

A mote flowed through the tightly controlled ring he had forged — and bounced off Mentis, the Aspect so dense and impermeable that it absorbed only the barest fraction of the energy. Gritting his teeth, he shifted the current — winding it around the pillar so the mote of essence ground against it like a whetstone honing steel. Bit by bit, the mote of energy was absorbed, before it was released once more.

Kaius repeated the process again. And again. And again — until his mind ached and his very soul felt wrung-out and strained. The complexity of directing his cycling into a tight spiral around each pillar made it almost impossible to make consistent progress. Every time his Authority and Will buckled, the flow collapsed — and he had to painstakingly build it up again.

At least Ianmus had found the bloody method. Without it, their progress would have slowed to a crawl, even with the benefits of the Shardworld. The atmospheric essence might have spurred his own production, but so far none of them had found a method to actually make use of that wealth of available energy directly. If they even could at this step of the Path — or ever.

Kaius was sure it could be, though. He could feel it in his bones. If not using the environmental essence, then something. The bottle neck was too extreme — and there was still one more to go! They might manage reaching the fourth stage with enough time, but beyond that? No, there had to be something else. 

Or they’d just have to find a Treasure here that could help. That would work just fine.

Distracted by his hope of easy gains, the tight loop of Authority that was guiding his cycling collapsed, and his essence dissipated. Kaius sighed, bumping his head against the trunk behind him as he let the transformation go.

Opening his eyes, he saw Porkchop dozing across from him — and Ianmus still awake, flicking through a book under the light of a dull, orange wardlight. Kenva was nowhere to be seen. She must have still been stargazing on the other side of the trunk.

“Much luck?” Ianmus said through their rings, glancing over at Porkchop as he grumbled in his sleep.

Kaius shrugged. “Progress is slow, but it's steady. I’ll get there — I just wish it didn’t cause a headache. There’s got to be a trick that we haven't found yet. Our current methods won’t be enough for the bottleneck."

“I know what you mean. I can’t say I’m thrilled that we’re going through this completely blind, but we can’t do much about that. Our penance, for being at the very forefront of things, I suppose.”

“There’s always a Crucible if we get stuck,” Kaius suggested, though for some reason the words felt a little sour to say.

Ianmus nodded slowly, before he glanced up at Kaius over the edge of his book. “Feels a little like giving up, though, doesn’t it?”

Kaius let out a heavy breath, shaking his head with wry amusement. At the end of the day, it seemed like they were all stubborn mules. Not that it was a surprise — they’d earned their obstinance, and none of them would have made it as far as they did without it.

For a moment, they sat in a silence broken only by the soft turning of pages of Ianmus’s book. Then, the mage straightened. 

“You know, we’ve been growing fast — enough that we’ve been seriously considering the chance we’ll hit Platinum before we leave, as ridiculous as it sounds. Even with our struggles with Refinement, I’m confident we’ll figure it out — or find a Treasure to circumvent it.”

“And?” Kaius asked, wondering where his friend was going.

“It’s been making me think more about the next step of the Path. The Reliquary. What it is — what it might mean.”

Kaius nodded slowly and summoned a thin blanket from his ring. He’d wondered the same thing. As always, the System had been tantalisingly vague about what it entailed — and Kaius sincerely doubted that someone else had made it there that they could ask. He knew they’d receive more information when they crossed into the third tier themselves, but it didn’t stop him wondering.

“They store things, right?”

“Usually holy relics,” Ianmus confirmed. “It being a description for the way in which we build ourselves to Ascendancy is…interesting to say the least. Everything we’ve heard from both the System and Xenanra has made it clear there is something almost religious about the process.”

“It does turn you into a god.”

Ianmus cracked a smile, conceding the point. “It does turn you into a god. Still, if the Aspects are our foundation, and the base of our cycling, is the Reliquary built atop them? Around them? Does it catch essence, or something stranger?”

“I mean, the creatures we’ve seen here store and make use of it, so it must be possible.”

“True, but they do many things that are impossible for us. I get the feeling there are differences between being moulded to fit essence, and being born to it. Or created for it, in the case of Tyrants. It would not be the only difference between us and them — there’s a great deal of theorising that has gone into understanding how beasts’ class analogues differ from our own.” Ianmus let out a soft sigh. “There’s just too much we don't know.”

“Well, we’ll find out. The Path might be precarious and difficult, but we’ll do it — no matter what.”

They needed to. Their very world depended on it.

When Ianmus nodded, Kaius couldn’t help but ponder his friend's words more. Regardless of the specifics, he felt pretty confident that the next step would involve a new structure in their soul — not just a progressive improvement of their Aspects like they’d undergone with Refinement. Who knew what benefits it would bring? What they’d received already was frankly absurd, and he doubted the rewards would grow lesser as the Path progressed in difficulty.

That said, he doubted it would turn them into essence-slinging warriors over night. There was some wisdom to Ianmus’s words, he thought — the creatures here were born to essence. He couldn’t trust that they would be a good point of comparison. 

“Excited for tomorrow?” Ianmus asked a few minutes later. “We should hit the plateau by midday.”

“Gods’ damned right I am. The jungle has been fun and interesting, but we’ve been trekking through this place for a couple of weeks now. I’m ready for a bit of a change in scenery, if only for a little while.”

“And the promise of a Treasure that has Olmos interested has nothing to do with it?”

“That too,” Kaius admitted with a grin.

Ianmus matched it. “You’re right though — it’ll be nice to be out of these trees for a bit. I might have the stats to fall asleep on solid stone, but I'm really starting to miss the petty comforts of the Pegleg. Is that bad? I feel like Julian complaining about pouring out his wine.”

Kaius bit back a laugh. “I can’t say I disagree with you there.”

It was a bit amazing how quickly he’d gotten used to having lodgings on demand, even in the middle of the wilds. He’d grown up sleeping in ditches, for gods’ sake! Even their old dimensional tent didn’t match the comfort — but even that would have been better than nothing. They hadn’t dared use it out here. Not when just about everything would be able to see through its basic camouflage, and the dimensional space interfered with their ability to sense approaching threats.

A rustle from above preluded Kenva dropping through the leaves. She landed in a soft crouch, barely making a sound as she took a seat on her bedroll. 

“I see you boys are still up.”

“Yeah — I just finished doing some Refining, then we started chatting about that and the plateau. Anything interesting up top?”

“Not really,” Kenva replied as she got under her covers. “Stars are pretty, but it’s been much the same as anywhere else. Can’t say I'm not excited to reach our destination myself — though I hope it won’t take us too long to find this cave. We don’t exactly have that long until the Proving itself — just a couple of weeks.”

“Surely not,” Ianmus replied. “Olmos left us some pretty specific directions.”

“Sure, but that only matters if the scout who sold them to him was being honest.”

“They’d have to be a fool to try and scam a grandmaster,” Kaius pointed out.

Kenva shrugged noncommittally. “Some people are fools — but you’re right, I'm not that worried. We should still get some sleep though. The earlier we set off, the sooner we’ll arrive.”

“Very true,” Kaius said, shuffling down to get comfortable.

After weeks of hard travel, he was out in moments.A/N: the Hunger closed beta continues to consume me, I have yet to write anything this week lmao. Gonna force myself to spend some time writing today though -- got an interlude to do, and then a chapter with an onslaught of system notifications as the Proving begins (exciting!). I generally try to keep the books under 100 chapters nowadays, but im not quite sure how im going to manage with this one. Ignoring interludes, im already up to chapter 70, and i've got the actual proving to write now. It shouldn't be more than 50-60 chapters, right? (I really can't let it bleed into more than 340k words, cause getting physical copies beyond that point is a PITA as I found with b2). Interludes continue to come in pairs, as there's like 4 groups we're following now, and I struggle to write POVs that are shorter than 900 words while still having meaningful content. They should be a bit more scattered and infrequent in this last act of the book as things come together and the various groups interact, at least.