Seth let out a low groan as he slowly regained consciousness in a hard bed. He felt like he had been hit by a truck (a phrase Landon had explained to him). Slowly opening his eyes that were caked with sleep, he saw that he was in one of the lower parts of the temple basement. The gray-green stone was covered in flickering shadows. Despite the gloomy ambiance, Seth felt more comfortable here than he had ever been. It was like he was supposed to be here somehow.

Hearing shallow breathing nearby, Seth looked around. His dad was slumped in a small chair next to Seth’s bed. There was a scroll dangling from his fingers as he snored softly. Seth could sense that his dad was sleep deprived, and that he shouldn’t wake him. It was an odd awareness that felt natural even though he had never been able to pick up that kind of thing before. His dad would probably explain the new sense later. Seth consciously relaxed his muscles and fell back asleep.

When he awoke again, Levi was awake and reading from an old circular book on the Sacred Essences. Seth tried to speak up, but found that his throat was dry and his lips were cracked. All that came out was a whistling wheeze. His dad looked up and handed Seth a water pouch.

“You’ve been out for a day and a half.” Levi explained. “The only reason you don’t have a terrific headache is the amount of Virtue you’re projecting.”

Seth drank a mouthful of water and managed to ask. “Why am I down here?”

“Virtue projection.” His dad said again. “Once your gift was heightened to Priest level, you started passively projecting a lot of Virtue essence. That’s normal, but it can cause some problems for people that don’t have Virtue essence themselves.”

Seth drained half the pouch in one go, then regretted it when a feeling of nausea swam outward from his stomach. Fortunately it faded quickly.

“Will my passive projection lessen over time?” Seth asked.

“No.” Levi replied. “As you get to grips with your abilities, you’ll actually be able to project more. What you need is to learn control.”

“Ok, what do I do?” Seth inquired. “Stop circulating Virtue in my body?”

Levi’s lips quirked up. “No Seth, that circulation is the control I’m talking about. You just need to take that technique and expand it. Instead of constantly pulling a small amount of Virtue from inside your soul to circulate through your body, you’ll pull from what you’re projecting out of your soul.”

“Like this?” Seth asked, trying to suck in the Virtue he felt in tune with around him.

“No, no, no!” Levi exclaimed, waving his hands as Seth began to take on a slight golden glow. “You aren’t circulating properly. You’re still pulling from inside, and now you’re also drawing from the temple itself. You need to use your passive radiation.”

Personally, Seth felt amazing. He didn’t want to stop doing this, but at his dad’s insistence he let the extra Virtue go. The potent feeling of having comfort slathered like honey over every nook and cranny of his body ebbed away. Seeing Seth’s look of disappointment, Levi started walking him through the process of shifting his basic Virtue circulation to the full Priest version. Slowly Seth began to pull less Virtue from inside his soul, but pulled an equivalent amount from just outside his soul. He circulated it through his body the same way he always did. Over the course of a few minutes, he stopped straining his soul directly, but had the same amount of essence flowing through him.

“Woah, It’s like I was holding my breath and I finally let it out!” Seth exclaimed. “I never noticed the strain of constantly pulling Virtue essence all the time.”

“If you think that’s good,” Levi said with a wink. “You’ll love the next part. You’ve actually only reduced the amount of Virtue you’re projecting by about a tenth. In order to properly reign it in, you need to bring it down to a tenth of the total strength.”

Seth looked at him with wide eyes and mouth slightly ajar. Over the next hour, Levi helped him pull in more and more of his Virtue. By the time the projection had been reduced to his dad’s satisfaction, Seth had started to feel the wonderful honey sensation again. It wasn’t nearly as strong, but it was still nice.

“So, before we move on to the other basics.” Levi said. “You need to be aware of how much Virtue you’re projecting. Now that you’re circulating properly, it won’t push out again on its own, but over time you will get stronger and more might begin to radiate. From time to time, take a minute to feel your Virtue projection and pull more into circulation if it's increased.”

Seth nodded, trying to familiarize himself with the amount of Virtue essence still leaving his body. If he could remember what it felt like now, he figured he would notice if there was more.

“Now, there are two more basic techniques to learn before I go.” His dad said. “Recognizing essence projected by someone else, and pushing Virtue into your environment to align it.”

It didn’t take long for Seth to pick up on his dad’s essence, even with all the aligned Virtue surrounding them. Levi explained that he would be able to feel any heightened essence gift the same way, and that he could learn to recognize the unique feeling of a given essence. Chaos, Plant, and Virtue Seth already had intimate experience with, but there were dozens of essences to familiarize himself with.

“Do any of the soldiers or wanderers have full essence abilities?” Seth asked. “I could learn from them.”

“Wanderers might.” Levi said, considering. “Soldiers are unlikely to. Essence use abilities are uncommon, much less fully heightened ones, so wanderers are probably your best bet here in Lith.”

“What about low level essence use?” Seth asked. “Priest Joe has been able to tell when people have those abilities, or when people without essence-use abilities are around.”

“That’s his specialty as a Head Priest.” Levi explained. “In the same way you and I can tell what condition someone’s in as part of our heightened Virtue ability, he can sense people in general. It works over the whole area of the temple grounds.”

“So there’s no point trying to learn.” Seth said, disappointed.

“Not necessarily.” His dad said. “That may not be your specialty, but if he was willing to instruct you at such an early stage, you might be able to sense better than me eventually.”

Now preoccupied wondering how to approach the Head Priest, Seth had to make a conscious effort to pay attention to his dad’s last lesson on aligning an area. It was, as Levi explained, a matter of pulling from the soul and pushing essence out with the intent of influencing the environment. Seth got it on his second try, and Levi explained that one of Seth’s duties as a full Priest was to take a turn aligning the temple and the grounds every third week. This explained why Seth had seen Joe and Levi occasionally take long walks around the temple in the past. Levi left Seth to practice with the basic projection control techniques and said that Judge Caleb would be down in an hour or two.

Quickly growing bored with alignment, Seth cycled between sensing the essence of the temple around him and dialing his Virtue projection up or down. As the sensations became more familiar, Seth began to become aware of another essence around him. He soon determined that it was coming from him. The unknown essence was far subtler than any of the others he had encountered. Once Seth realized it was there, he started trying to control his projection of this new essence like he had with Virtue, but he was stymied on two fronts.

First, the unknown essence couldn’t be circulated in his body—the same issue he had run into with Plant essence. Second, Seth was projecting far, far more of this essence than Virtue essence. Even before he reigned it in, his virtue essence projection didn’t even reach the edges of the basement and tapered off toward the edges, and was down to around ten feet now. He couldn’t feel the limit of how far he was projecting the unknown essence, which was unsettling.

After trying to find a way to keep the essence in his body for the better part of an hour, Seth was getting close to telling someone about it and asking how people controlled the projection of other essences. Then, he accidentally discovered the solution when trying to circulate it again out of increasing desperation; the unknown essence could be circulated, just not in the body. Seth could circulate it in his soul. Choosing not to ponder the implications of this, Seth began pulling the unknown essence into his soul as quickly as he could. Even at a tenth of the projection strength he couldn’t feel the edges, so Seth just kept going, his concern overriding his common sense.

He finally stopped when there was so much of the essence spiraling through his soul that his Plant essence connection itself had started to feel strangely pressured. Seth didn’t know what the unknown essence was doing, and didn’t dare pull in any more. At this point, he thought that he could just barely feel the edges of the unknown essence projection, somewhere just outside the walls of the town.

Restricting the range also had the helpful side effect of significantly reducing the background unsound from his recently developed ability to hear people’s gifts. Even though Amber had inadvertently helped him figure out what the unsound meant, it had been too distracting to focus on long enough to gain useful information.

When Seth heard his dad and Judge Caleb entering the basement with the ability, he decided that he wanted to keep this development under his hat for now. His new unsound ability had already developed faster than should have been possible, but having developed a new essence use ability that was already fully heightened was unheard of. Even low level essence use abilities couldn’t be gained by chance, instead requiring long periods of study and understanding.

____________________________________________

Healer Levi led Caleb down three levels of the basement before they finally reached the room Seth was in. Caleb could feel the Virtue alignment that had been cemented over the years pressing down on him uncomfortably. He already knew what the boy had been taught so far, and how his parents had instructed his essence use, so Healer Levi nodded to Caleb and left. Caleb walked over to Seth’s bed and leaned against a nearby wall.

“You may not be aware, but you have a new essence.” He said, trying not to wince as he entered the boy’s Virtue projection.

Seth clearly needed more practice in controlling the essence, which made sense. Seth’s reaction to Caleb’s statement was not what he was expecting. Instead of nodding or looking confused, the boy paled and looked nervous. ‘Interesting,’ Caleb thought. Perhaps Seth’s mysterious new ability was related to essence use as well, and the kid was hiding it for one reason or another. Using four different essences was so rare that Caleb had never heard of anyone that could.

“The heightening ritual was ecumenical.” He explained, before Seth could say anything. “In addition to bringing your Virtue essence up to a Healer’s level, it should have given you a limited ability to use Sin essence.”

“Oh. Oh!” Comprehension dawned on Seth’s face. “That’s great! Am I projecting Sin too, then?”

“No.” Caleb said. “Your ability to use Sin essence will be at a roughly similar level to your ability to use Virtue essence before it was heightened. The nature of Sin essence is different from Virtue though. There are techniques that allow you to project it to a degree even as a low level ability.”

Seth looked tired and had a slight twitch in his left eye as he asked. “So how do I use it?”

“First, you need to connect to the Sin essence you now possess.” Caleb replied. “Your father told me that you connected to your Plant essence only a couple months ago, so this shouldn’t be particularly difficult.”

Caleb was wrong. Engendering in Seth the mindset of superiority and the will to oppress that he needed to properly connect to Sin essence took far too long. The only reason they succeeded at all was that Caleb eventually started provoking Seth to try and annoy him into a sufficiently hostile attitude. Fortunately, once the connection was established, Seth’s apparently antithetical personality was no longer an issue. Caleb walked him through pulling the Sin essence from inside his soul into a rigid shell just outside of it, within the body. This served a similar purpose to circulating Virtue essence, but provided different benefits.

Once Seth adjusted to the technique, he visibly relaxed. The Sin barrier created protection for the mind and body from the effects of hostile essences. Caleb knew that this meant Seth was no longer affected by his gift for intimidation, like other Priests of Sin. He then began showing Seth how to push Sin into another person to break down their body. Caleb framed this from a healing perspective, but they both knew that wasn’t why the technique existed. Once Seth had grasped the basics, Caleb told him to figure out the rest himself, and to practice on trees before people.

As he walked out of the basement deep in thought, Healer Levi stopped him.

“Did you teach him everything he needs to know about Sin essence?” The Healer asked.

“No.” Caleb replied brusquely.

“What?!” Levi demanded. “Why not? Sin is dangerous! He could hurt himself, or someone else.”

“People use essences in different ways, you know this as well as I.” Caleb said flatly. “The way I use Sin isn’t helpful to him. I gave him rudimentary instruction, so he should be fine moving forward. He just needs to find the way he will use Sin in concert with Virtue. That’s better done on his own. Once he has his own basic techniques, send him to a Church of Sin. They’ll teach him how to use it more conventionally.”

“That…but…fine.” Levi said, scowling slightly. “I suppose you’ll be on your way, then.”

“Yes, but one more thing.” Caleb added, with a serious expression. “Seth needs to have a very good understanding of how to use Sin before he tries it on people. His use of it is too strong.”

“What do you mean, ‘too strong?’” Levi asked, raising his unibrow.

“When I showed him how to push Sin essence into my body, he did so almost as easily as I could.” Caleb explained. “It shouldn’t be that potent. When he’s better trained in both essences, I highly recommend getting him Explicated like I mentioned before. If the ability was heightened more than we expected, you need to know.”

Levi nodded. “I understand. Thank you again for helping my wife and son, and good luck on your return trip.”

Caleb simply shook the Healer’s hand and left.