Nimrod spent the next two days in doing nothing but cultivation. He’d noticed early on that the longer he spent cultivating, the less each essence each breath cycle drew in.

“That is to be expected,” Eleanor said when he approached her at the end of the first day. “The essence in your center is yours, and is aligned with your core. The essence you draw in, however, is formless. Its presence in your center masks the core, and weakens its ability to draw more in. It takes time for the formless essence to align with your core, and during that time your cultivation efficiency drops.

“Under ordinary circumstances, you would only spend a few hours each day cultivating, and the rest of your time you would be training in the martial arts, practicing techniques, or studying the Sages’ lore. However, you cannot practice any of the arts of techniques until Irene returns and heals your arm, and this isolated shrine does not have a library for you to study in. Therefore, even if your cultivation is less efficient after the first hours, it is still the best use of your time, for now.”

The metal-aligned Disciple had been spending very little time in the shrine since her arrival. She explained that she could feel the presence of another Beast in the forest, but was having trouble locating it. Otherwise, she said, she would have been spending at least part of the day teaching him.

Nimrod could barely sleep after the second day. While the hunter was used to long hours spent motionless while stalking his prey, those periods were always separated by physical activity and intense labor, and the long days spent sitting still and breathing had him full of restless energy. In addition, his core had filled up that evening, and was giving him the unpleasant feeling of having a fully compressed spring in his stomach. One which was trying to expand, but had nowhere to go.

“Essence isn’t meant to be still,” Eleanor explained. “Your core is full, and the essence can’t go anywhere. Once you open your first meridian, the essence will continuously cycle through it, and your core will stop feeling like it’s trying to burst.”

She was not, however, willing to guide him through opening it that night, and Nimrod didn’t know enough to even start on his own. Back at his cabin, he tossed and turned for most of the night, and woke up feeling exhausted, and yet somehow full of energy at the same time.

Eleanor was waiting for him outside the shrine, and beckoned for him to follow her out of the village.

“We’ll be starting with your Governing meridian,” she said as they were walking towards the forest. “It impacts, among other things, your heart and lungs, which will help you cultivate faster even without any further techniques. It is also the most disgusting meridian to open, which is why neither of us is eating breakfast yet.”

“Why would it be disgusting?”

“Opening your meridians causes essence to start running through your body, which starts the body tempering process. Your body, while mortal, accumulates impurities. Small clots in your blood, scar tissue, foreign matter that your body can’t normally get rid of and various other kinds. The tempering process flushes those impurities out of your body, and the first part of that process, the opening of your meridians, flushes a lot of them at once.

“Which is why,” she added as they approached a small stream far enough from the village to be private, “you’ll be doing it outside the village, and near a source of running water.”

Nimrod was not eager for a repeat of his dunking in the icy cold water, but at least this time he could prepare for it in advance. Starting a fire was a lot easier when he had dry kindling prepared, and when his hands weren’t shaking from hypothermia.

“You might want to take off at least your shirt before you start. The results of meridian opening are nearly impossible to remove from clothe.”

He felt very self-conscious about undressing in front of the attractive, and imposing, Disciple, but wasn’t about to start arguing with her. Besides, he thought, keeping his clothes dry would make it a lot easier to recover from the expected cold bath.

“I’m afraid you’ve got it about as rough as possible,” Eleanor said, looking him over with what Nimrod couldn’t help but feel was an appreciative gaze. “In the larger temples and clan houses, we have heated bathing chambers specifically for opening meridians comfortably.”

“Not really helping,” Nimrod countered, the cold and slight embarrassment somewhat inhibiting his common sense.

“Sorry. Let’s start, so you can get dressed and warm up faster. Sit down, close to the water.”

Nimrod sat down, and found that his breathing was almost instinctively settling into the proper rhythm for cultivation.

“Good. Now, once you start pushing essence into your body, you’re going to start feeling very uncomfortable. That feeling is the essence starting to push the impurities out of your body. You must continue following my instructions and ignoring anything else. If you lose hold of your essence before finishing the process, you’ll lose the essence and cause yourself some more essence burns.”

Nimrod nodded his understanding, and Eleanor continued her instructions.

“Picture your center, and then reach into it and pinch a little bit of essence. Pull it down out of the core, while twisting it like you are spinning yarn. Keep twisting it and pull it down towards the end of your spine.”

It took Nimrod a few attempts to get a proper grip on his essence, but eventually he managed to pull a line of essence from his core to his spine.

“Good. Now pull it up over the back of your spine until you reach the skull.”

The line of essence couldn’t be pulled fast. If at any time he tried to pull faster than he could twist, the part of the line coming from the core started to unravel into a shapeless mass. And if he tried to twist too fast, the line started to kink. Even worse, an annoying itch started to spread from the bottom of his spine, and he had to suppress an urge to stop and scratch it.

Once again, Nimrod’s experience as a hunter came to his aid. Hours of sitting motionless under assault by dripping water, tickling branches and stinging insects have prepared him to the ordeal of ignoring the sensations caused by the essence spreading through his body.

It took half an hour to pull the line of essence up to the base of his skull, after which Eleanor talked him through guiding the line up over the back of the skull and the crown of his head, and back down the forehead and the nose and to his lips.

The itching sensation has spread to his entire back and his head, and Nimrod had to grit his teeth to stop himself from scratching.

He kept pulling and twisting the line down his chin and neck and over his sternum, adding an urge to sneeze to the itch, down his abdomen and to his crotch, then between the legs and up again.

Nausea threatened to make him lose control, but somehow he managed to hold on long enough to thread the line back into his core, right next to the spot it left from. He barely had enough time to notice that essence was flowing through the line and pooling behind his upper lip before the combination of sensations threw him out of his center and he found himself puking what felt like everything he’d ever eaten and coughing his lungs out at the same time.

After what felt like an eternity, but was probably no more than a few minutes, Nimrod’s lungs and stomach were finally empty. Oily black bile was splattered over the front of his body and the ground around him, giving out the most disgusting smell he’d ever encountered.

“Well done,” Eleanor’s voice sounded strange, and when he glanced at her she was holding her nose against the smell. “Now get into the water and clean yourself up, and I’ll see you back at the shrine.”

The smell was bad enough that he didn’t even notice the icy cold of the water, and he spent a long time scrubbing himself of the residue of impurities, and then even longer huddled next to the fire trying to get dry and warm again.

***

“How many times do I have to do that?” Nimrod asked. He was across the table from Eleanor, with the devastated remains of lunch in front of him. He still found it hard to believe that he could even be hungry after being exposed to the expelled impurities, but as soon as he smelled the food he found himself famished, and couldn’t even pause to speak before eating everything in sight.

“You have a total of five meridians, of which you will only be opening four at this time. The Right Linking meridian, which links to your right hand, will wait until you can cultivate fast enough to fill your ability. You’ll be happy to hear that the other meridians will not be as bad as the Governing meridian, which links most of your internal organs.”

“That’s quite a relief. This morning was probably the worst experience of my life, and it has quite a lot of competition considering the past month.”

“Oh, it could be much much worse. I opened mine with a Chipped core, so I had to contend with essence burns and the physical transformations on top of what you went through.”

“Why would you go through that if it’s so bad?”

“Because it shaves months, if not years, off your path. And if you choose the right Beast to get a core from, the physical transformations can be very beneficial. But Chipped is the highest rank you can start from. The essence from a Scratched core will kill someone with a mundane body.”

“Does that mean I’ll open my, how did you call it? Right Linking meridian? After I reach a Chipped core?”

“That’s the safe way to do it. But at rank, it would still take almost a year to fill up your Perfect ability. I would suggest that you wait until you have a Scratched core before opening it. You’ll damage your arm badly, but we’ll get a healer to prevent the essence from ruining it. The ability will still keep you drained of essence for over a month, but it’s the best plan I can think of.”

“I’m really not looking forward to that.”

“It’s worth it though. Your core is the foundation of your power as a Disciple, but it’s useless without the meridians.”

“What do you mean?”

“The meridians distribute the essence into your body to temper it, which is what makes Disciples and Beasts stronger than mundane humans and animals. They also serve as secondary storages, which let you hold more essence. Finally, the motion of the essence in the meridians is what activates our techniques.”

“About that. You mentioned that techniques require physical motion to move essence, but when building up my core and opening my meridian I used my mind to manipulate my essence. Couldn’t I activate techniques the same way?”

“You could, of course. But it takes years of practice before you can concentrate enough to manipulate essence with your mind while still paying attention to the world around you, let alone during a battle. Mastering a technique to the point you can use it mentally during combat is the primary requirement to be considered a mage.”

“That does make sense.”

“Good. Now, I need to go back to hunting what I think is probably a shadowpard, and you should go back to cultivating. The sooner you finish opening your meridians, the sooner we can start training you to fight like a Disciple.”