When I arrived back at Academy Tetra and Wulfric were already sitting over a game of Fortress and chatting in our new room. I was surprised at first that they had arrived so early, but then I remembered that they were both from the city – they probably stayed at Academy over most freedays, what with having no place to stay in North Stone Village.

They both looked over at me and smiled, giving me nearly identical greeting salutes (with a hand partly extended, palm facing outward – though I had noticed that those from The City tended to hold their arms more rigidly than we did out here in North Stone Village) which I returned enthusiastically.

“Good to see you both!” I said, not bothering to pretend that I didn’t know Tetra. Wulfric seemed much too perceptive to buy a ruse like that, and the last thing I wanted was to make our new roommate suspicious.

“Glory of the morning to you, Heller.” Replied Wulfric, using one of the greetings typical of those who venerate the spirits of Life and the Harvest (which he must have learned from his mother).

“Why did you tell Wulfric that you are a cultivator? Wasn’t that dangerous?” Asked Tetra, not bothering to return my greeting. Maybe having faced life and death together put us past things like that.

Then what she said sunk in, and I widened my eyes, looking between both of them. What the hell! I sure as heck hadn’t told him any such thing! Wulfric had a small smile on his face, and Tetra was still looking at me impatiently, waiting for an answer.

“Uhhhhh…” I answered succinctly.

Wulfric raised a hand to get Tetra’s attention (he already had mine). “I must apologize. I knew something must be up, between the rumors, your odd behavior,” he said, nodding at me, “and the fact that a five-year-old boy was admitted to Academy.” He shrugged.

Tetra’s head snapped around as she looked at him, her mouth agape. “Wait….. you lied to me!” She said, standing up suddenly and upsetting half the pieces on the Fortress board as she glared daggers at Wulfric.

He stayed seated, his hand still raised in the symbol for peace (a closed fist with the palm facing outward). “I am sorry, Tetra. When you spoke about Heller I could tell there was something in your voice, and something you were hiding from me.”

I wasn’t sure whether to get angry or not… How the hell did he manage to trick her? I decided to voice the question, “What do you mean, what did you do, Wulfric?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed as he replied, “I had noticed how some of the instructors treat you, and how they look at you behind your back, especially the Master of Fire. She seems to be almost frightened of you, and she always tries to keep you in view when you are near her. Then there are the rumors that Merrik has taken an apprentice… and… I don’t know, maybe also a feeling I had.” He shrugged, looking uncomfortable, and I had to remind myself again that he was only ten years old. “So once I had met Tetra,” he continued, “I could see how she acted when we spoke of you, and I decided to use one of the tactics my father had taught me…” He faced the table, raising his eyes to glance between Tetra and me while keeping his head down.

Tetra looked at me, her eyes wide, “He asked me when you were going to start teaching me how to cultivate!” She breathed, “I’m so sorry Heller, I just thought… I thought you must have told him!”

I was getting a pretty clear picture of what had happened here…

I did my best to look stern, not as easy as it sounds when coming from the frame of a five year old, “You could have just asked me, Wulfric.” I said… but I would have lied to him, of course… no point mentioning that now however. “And it has to be kept secret, by order of the Head of Academy, Master Jaduk.” I stared at him for a moment. “This is very important, Wulfric. Do you understand?”

He looked at me with a hopeful half-smile that quickly turned into a serious nod. “I understand, Heller. I swear on the Spirits within all things that I will do my best to keep your secret.” He leaned forwards, the smile slowly coming back again. I had a feeling like I was being played, but he was so straightforward about it that I couldn’t bring myself to get mad at him. “But I want you to teach me how to cultivate.”

So that’s what this was about… I looked at Tetra, who was giving me a similar hopeful look to Wulfric. What the hell, guys! I sighed.

“I should be mad at both of you.” I said, looking between them. Tetra gave Wulfric an angry glare, as though agreeing with me but ignoring her part in this who mess. I shook my head. I don’t think I could teach them even if I wanted too… and I didn’t even know if I wanted to teach them in the first place! I decided to discuss it with Wolfram tonight, see what he thought. “We can talk about it later, for now I just want to get some rest. We have a long day tomorrow…”

------------------------

Sent Wolfram.

Followers? What the hell, these were real people, not characters in a game! I knew that Wolfram was just goofing around, but still… these were my friends (or they had potential to be, anyway). I sent a sense of amusement mixed with indignation, knowing that although Wolfram sometimes talks like a jerk, it’s all in fun and he is actually a very kind person at heart, probably kinder than I was when it got right down to it. I sent along with laughter.

Wolfram replied with his own sense of amusement and a chuckle,

I thought about that for a moment.

He asked me in his typical devil-may-care fashion.

That’s Wolfram for you, game for anything that might stir things up… but he did have a good point. Teaching them could help us forge a lasting bond, and I really did think they were both good people so far. And I did feel that I was a good judge of character, overall, though I had been wrong before.

I sent,

Even though I said that, I actually did have a few ideas that might have worked. After looking over the Cultivation Technique of House Spiritwind (the one that Wolfram had sent me) I was getting a faint glimmer of how things might operate in the Cultivation world.

Conviction seemed to be a big part of it – as in, if you didn’t firmly believe that you could shoot lightning after practicing a Cultivation Technique… you would probably fail. That is likely why the techniques that the Great Houses used were so well defined and structured, steeped in examples and history; to make it nearly impossible to not believe the technique would work!

I also had a theory that storing up Qi from the universe might work on the same principle: If you lacked confidence, it wouldn’t work. The Cultivation Technique that Wolfram and I had was from the Celestial Plane, and I was starting to suspect that the rules governing a place like that might be vastly different than the rules governing a mortal world like this.

Maybe there, in the Celestial Plane, conviction wasn’t needed? Maybe Qi was so dense and hard to avoid that anyone could use it, or perhaps beings born as Celestials had some natural ability to store and use Qi that mortals lacked? It was impossible to know, but if so that would explain why the Celestial’s warning to us was so cryptic… if he had spelled everything out we would have lost our belief at the start, and therefore never been able to use the Celestial Cultivation Technique that he gave us at all.

In light of all that, if I was correct, his message to us was pure genius, worded just right to get us to cultivate while not questioning anything. In fact, The System itself might not actually exist, and might be a creation of our minds, or belief, and our Qi combining to create whatever we imagined!

Even thinking these thoughts was risky, but I couldn’t help myself – I had always loved figuring out how things worked. And since I had used my powers in action, real live combat testing, I had something solid and firm to shore up my belief. Maybe my cultivation wasn’t real before, but it damn sure was now – others had seen and felt the effects, and I actually found that speaking with Tetra about it helped as well. Having someone else acknowledge what I had done made it even harder for doubt to creep in and muck things up.

A loud mental shout suddenly interrupted my musing, sent Wolfram.

I realized that I had spaced out, missing several messages from him. The most pertinent was the first one in the log.

Wolfram: He had included a sense of excitement and achievement with the message.

The rest of the log was just prompts to get my response, so I quickly replied, I sent with a sense of apologetic amusement,

He sent back.

Teaching them might actually be pretty good for me… once I got to know them better...

And if I taught them something along the lines of my own personal cultivation technique, it may benefit me as well. But without the glowing symbol their progress would be incredibly slow.

Maybe Wolfram would come up with something interesting? He has certainly surprised me before!