Chapter 77 — Hello Darkness, My New Friend

Earthday found Ria in the bowels of Parthanex Tower standing alone before the door to one of the tower’s isolation chambers set aside for student use. Though still a little sleepy at the early start, the empty corridors, rows of enchanted doors, and the quiet thrum of earth-attuned energy permeating through the tower’s foundations matched her contemplative mood fairly well.

The king of Revant and his soldiers may have taken away her birth family, but she wasn’t alone. She had so many new friends who cared about her, and a new family to rely on—assuming her worries about Jarrel being a spy involved with the Inquisitors proved unfounded, and maybe even then.

Keira had shown an unusually pensive expression when Ria explained Lestina’s demand during dinner, agreeing that taking time to stabilize her foundations was very important—especially with the dangerous rate which she was improving—and Jarrel wasn’t happy to hear that anything she was doing was ‘dangerous’, further expressing concerns about the extent of her current commitments, her propensity to overdo things, and her debut coming up so soon.

Even so, reliable as always, her new family member, protector, and guardian still agreed to escort them in the morning. Arthur was eager to get an early start of his own and had also joined.

The corner of her mouth turned up wryly. That said, they had each sure promptly abandoned her for their own projects, wishing her success and going their separate ways pretty much the moment they were through the gate.

Even Ranger left her to spend extra time working on his fire attunement in the student lounge’s elemental garden. He was really pushing himself to improve.

But thinking about the short time spent at this academy, it was clear that she and Ranger weren’t the only ones pushing beyond their limits to improve themselves.

And, it wasn’t just Keira and Arthur, either. Her thoughts went to Katria, Rialle, and Tallien after the last Grand Games training and how all three were desperately working to form a seed of their own, and the two Soulkeeper students that had been in Soulkeeper Renard’s waiting room, the girl studying her technique manual and the boy practicing his meditation while waiting, even the two older Silver Shield girls wearing stylish dresses just minutes after classes ended as they went to socialize with the other nobles—with how competitive attendance at this academy was, all of the students were likely trying their hardest in their own way to improve themselves and their circumstances or they never would have made it this far.

With reaffirmed determination, Ria pushed energy into the waiting inscription, opening the door to the chamber she had reserved only minutes earlier and revealing a small room with an inner door inscribed with very different glyphs—void glyphs.

Though reluctant to bother the Towerkeeper so early in the morning, Ria didn’t have the luxury to waste her very limited time figuring out the correct way to use the chamber.

“Towerkeeper, Towerkeeper.”

Towerkeeper Alenna responded promptly and sounded wide-awake, “That you are up to something so early in the morning does have me rather curious, I’ll admit. How can I assist you, young Ria? Is this related to the orichalcum room you asked about?”

Ria shook her head. “My new tutor insisted that I meditate inside an isolation room before further attempts to improve my attunements, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do to properly use the room.”

“Oh, is that all?” If the Towerkeeper was disappointed, her voice didn’t show it, and the elder of Ria’s Order continued with good cheer, “Well, I am happy to help, dear. Is there anything in particular that has you puzzled?”

“Um…” Ria was kind of embarrassed to ask her question, but often, being direct was simplest. “Why are there two doors?”

“And here I was expecting a question about meditation theory!” Elder Alenna’s amused chuckle sounded through the air, turning Ria’s cheeks red. “It’s because taking anything with you into the isolation chamber will affect the attunement of the space inside. So, there is an outer room to store your things while you make use of the chamber.”

Ria’s mouth formed an ‘o’, and she was glad that she had asked even with the embarrassment. She thanked the elderly woman and got further information on how to lock the outer door as she stored everything in her vault and placed the vault key on the shelf below the hooks for hanging one’s robe and other clothing.

Towerkeeper Alenna explained how to set the timed seal for the inner door and bid Ria luck as she entered the isolation chamber proper and closed the glyph-inscribed inner door behind her.

Not only did the connection to the Towerkeeper cut off with the closing of the door, but all feeling of the outside world was… gone.

The sudden darkness and silent nothingness spurred a spike of panic, but Ria took a deep breath and seated herself where she thought the center of the room would be. She could feel the stone floor beneath her hands, but to her magic-sensing there was nothing there. The dichotomy was disturbing and uncomfortable.

Discomfort aside, the reason Lestina had demanded the use of such a room became immediately apparent; the lack of surrounding energy left the instability of the energy within her starkly revealed. Her energy visibly churned and flared and formed jagged edges with the flow of her thoughts, breathing, and the beat of her heart—and sometimes without any obvious cause.

No wonder the Soulkeeper girl was surprised at her not exploding into gory bits of oversaturated Ria flesh. If she were a scroll, it would be well past time to bring out the voidstone… but, the material of her body was oddly resilient—or maybe resistant?—in the face of the dense flows.

Ria called up energy from her reserves and watched it flood along her pathways like many roaring rivers of glowing molten gold, accelerating with every heartbeat, spreading to fill her and leaking out of her body in frothy sprays that licked at her skin like a metallic cloak of flame and shadow. Amidst the flame and shadow, each of her attunements glimmered in a rainbow of elements, ready to be called upon.

The sight was fascinating, and every moment that passed gave new insights into her own magic and each of the corresponding energy transformations—even those she thought long since mastered.

Entering into the unified meditation technique, Ria calmed her thoughts and her breathing, giving the flows purpose and direction, watching for places with poor efficiency. Gradually the froth lessened, and the density improved.

The success was modest but gave her insight into what she would need to do to improve her foundations. Twinges of pain soon reminded that the damage from her session with Orlisi still had yet to fully heal and put a stop to her progress.

The way the consequences of her intemperance continued to cost her progress at key moments was frustrating. Even so, Ria was ecstatic with the results. There was more she needed to learn, but now she was certain that this was the missing piece that was holding her back—the cause for her instability.

The remaining time wouldn’t be wasted even if she couldn’t actively cycle her energy. She could still explore more about how her body worked with the changes from unlocking her bloodline and practice the Soulkeeper mental techniques. And there was practicing the aura-faking technique, her most important priority if it was to be ready in time.

While breathing back in the energy she had leaked into the air thanks to her inefficiencies and storing the remaining excess energy to let her body rest, she again practiced Lestina’s thought-stillness technique and adjusted her focus to observe the natural flow between her mystic gates and within and without her body.

The first change apparent was that she had grown unexpected and surprisingly dense tangles of pathways along the sides and back of her head, pathways that seemed to breathe in energy from around her as easily as her lungs did. She had assumed it was due to her hair changing from dead to alive as High Priestess Alora had discussed with her, and while that was true to a small extent, Ria was fairly sure the change was something different.

Her skull had become denser both physically and magically in the affected areas, and even though her bones throughout her body had been gradually changing to orichalcum, the feeling of orichalcum density was also greater than elsewhere, except for maybe her heart. Comparing the pathways to those around her heart, brought an unexpected realization. This was more like a new organ, an organ dedicated to absorbing, transforming, and storing energy.

As a test, Ria called forth some of her orichalcum energy, and one of her suspicions became confirmed. Though much of her affinity’s energy came from the area around her heart, the orichalcum energy wasn’t fully integrated with her ‘energy’ gate and was instead created and stored by the changed parts of her body. Interestingly, the new organ’s function appeared to be as she suspected: drawing in other energies and converting them to orichalcum energy to help meet her need.

The observation matched with her experience in practice—that her orichalcum energy reserves were separate from the reserves stored in her ‘energy’ gate, and that the reserves took time to replenish. She could push the orichalcum energy into her energy gate, but that seemed to convert it into her usual energy.

She knew from Luventi’s beginner grimoire that one’s gate could be attuned to a particular element through repeated exposure, and she had consistently done that with every elemental source she had meditated near. Clearly, she would need to do the same with her orichalcum energy if she wanted to fully integrate with it. The downside was that she only had a limited reserve to work with to continue improving her body’s attunement and to practice her orichalcum magic.

If her new magical organ really could create orichalcum energy…

Ria performed an energy transformation and expelled fire energy to surround her, carefully observing as she focused on ‘breathing’ it back in through the new organ. The cluster of pathways came to life, compressing the energy down and transforming it. The resulting trickle of pure orichalcum energy into her blood and pathways was exciting… and, even if disappointing in its paucity, it would still be a boon when meditating in energy-rich locations. She hoped the capacity and efficiency could be improved through conscious use further developing the organ.

Ria sighed at her time being so limited. The discovery was interesting and might go a long way toward what Lestina had meant by ‘digesting’ the magic energies that she drew into her body, but it wasn’t something she could efficiently improve in this void environment, and she had more pressing tasks requiring her attention.

Setting further exploration and discovery aside for now, Ria formed her devouring fate aura, wrapping herself in the cloak of her ancient power and observing the qualities and consistency of the magic.

She was supposed to make it more subtle. Of course, using the tiniest flow possible to create the aura and accomplish the effect was what she needed to practice anyway if her energy reserves were to last for any length of time.

With a mental sigh and carefully working through another newly learned mental exercise—this one for attention-focusing—she set to work, adjusting the distribution of energy and refining its density, quality, and properties.

Progress was slow, but like with the work on her foundations, it was steady, and her newfound awareness of the natural outflow points in her skin helped her make the aura appear more natural as the continual refinement improved its purpose and efficiency.

Much work still remained when the chamber’s seal began to release, but Ria felt relief at the extent of her results from just the one session. Not only had she made discoveries about herself and begun shoring up her foundations, but thanks to the insights gained, she had found an effective and methodical process through which to achieve a passable mastery of the aura-faking technique in time for Divinesday evening. All-in-all, the session was a complete success, and she owed Lestina a huge thanks for her insistence.

Ranger was quick to query her when the sealed inner door opened and restored her connection to the outside world. After reassuring Ranger that she was fine, Ria gave serious thought to rearranging her priorities for the remaining time until the debut… and maybe for some time afterward.

She couldn’t ignore that, in the short-term, further progress might be more important than attending classes. Regrettably, the day’s elemental class was a practical on stone shaping, something she desperately needed to improve on to make both the statue of Keira’s grandmother and the glyph sculpture she had planned as apologies. It wasn’t a class she wanted to miss.

With a groan, Ria forced her sleepy limbs into motion, and let Ranger know she was on her way.