“The first thing you have to remember,” Eleanor started once they’d finished lunch and were back in the shrine’s courtyard, “is that this technique builds on the breathing technique I already taught you.”

Nimrod was standing in the middle of the inner circle, with Eleanor directly opposite him.

“Keep breathing rhythmically throughout the form, and synchronize your motions to your breathing. Now, stand straight, with your legs shoulder length apart and parallel to each other. Hands down in front of your abdomen, fingertips touching.”

She spent the next ten minutes adjusting his stance, making sure his feet were as close to parallel as possible, changing the precise elevation of his hands, even raising his head slightly so his eyes were no longer looking even slightly downward.

“Start the breathing exercises, and enter your center, but this time you need to keep your eyes open.”

Nimrod was familiar enough with the process by that point that it usually took him scant moments to enter his center, but keeping his eyes open while doing so made things significantly more difficult. Every time he started to visualize his center, Eleanor would shift a little bit, or an insect would fly about at the edge of his vision, and his focus would snap to the motion, causing him to lose his concentration.

It took half an hour before he managed to ignore the distractions around him enough to enter his center, and hold it in his mind while Eleanor nodded in satisfaction.

“Very good. Now, you already know how the form begins, since you were trying to perform it when I ran into you in the forest, but you need to understand that the motion has to be precise, and to synchronize with your breathing. You raise your hands to the sides and the level of your shoulders while breathing in, bend the elbows so the hands are in front of your eyes, with the fingertips touching while holding the breath, and push your hands down and back to their starting location while breathing out.”

Eleanor took in a slow, deep breath, and Nimrod had to struggle to look at her hands and not at the rise of her chest, nearly losing his center in the process. He did, however, manage to see how her arms were raised with the elbow only slightly bent. The wrists were kept locked throughout the motion, ending up with the palms pointing at the ground. She reached the level of her shoulders at the precise moment she stopped breathing in, but the motion continued seamlessly with her elbows bending so that her hands circled around them, wrists still locked, until they met in front of her yes, palms once again pointed downward. Without stopping, she started to breathe out, pushing her arms slowly downward, until they rested again in front of her abdomen.

“Now you try it with me.”

She started the motion again with Nimrod mirroring her. At first, he couldn’t quite get the timing down, and kept having to either stop between the three motions while waiting for his breathing cycle to catch up, or having to rush the motions to catch up with his breathing. Eleanor just kept repeating the motion, and after several more cycles, Nimrod managed to find the correct rhythm and move more fluidly.

Imperfect as his rhythm was, he was already seeing some benefit from the technique, as each breath was pulling in just a little bit more essence than it did while he was sitting down. It was a barely perceptible change, but it promised that once he could perform the full technique, and perform it to a decent standard, he’d be able to greatly increase his cultivation speed.

“Keep going,” Eleanor said once he’d found the proper rhythm. She stopped her own form, and went over to him, looking critically at his motions. Every now and then, she’d reach out and slightly adjust his form. Here turning the wrist to an almost imperceptibly different angle, there pulling an arm back so the circling motion was just a big wider. Minute adjustments, but very soon Nimrod could notice another small increase in the amount of essence he was breathing in.

“Good,” she said once she was satisfied. “Keep cultivating like this until your core is full. We’ll work on the next step tomorrow.”

Nimrod tried to follow Eleanor’s instructions, but his right arm, which still hadn’t healed from the burns he’d caused himself while using his ability, started to ache not long after she’d left, and after another hour of cultivating, moving it became painful enough that he couldn’t stay in his center any more.

On the other hand, Eleanor expected him to push to tier three by the next morning, and he really didn’t want to disappoint his teacher.

Fortunately, he still had the original cultivation method she’d taught him to fall back to, and while his arm still ached even when he was sitting down and motionless, it was a dull enough feeling that he could push through it and get back to cultivating.

By evening, his core was full, and he was looking forward to learning how to use his new essence-infused body the next morning.

***

He had a pleasant surprise waiting for him the next day. Irene, the Disciple in charge of protecting his village, was back. And being a Disciple of the Wood Element, she knew several healing techniques and was able to treat his arm.

“You’ve done quite a number on that arm,” the green robed woman said, her disturbingly large eyes examining the black streaks on his arm. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen essence burns this bad before.”

“Yeah, well, considering that the alternative was getting skewered by a Horned Hare, I’ll take the essence burns.”

“I guess you do have a point there,” she smirked, to Nimrod’s unstoppable groan. “Well, I’d better hop to it and start treating this.”

She directed him to rest his arm on the table, and started to move her hands in precise patterns above it. Green light gathered around her hands, and a green fog, similar to the essence fog he remembered from cultivating, started flowing down and into his arm.

“Not that we’ve ever actually talked beyond pleasantries before,” he said to distract himself from the tickling sensation that creeped over his arm wherever the fog touched it, “but I don’t think I’ve ever heard you pun before.”

“I try to avoid it in front of the villagers,” she shrugged. “I’m supposed to be their one defense against any Beast that might come from the forest, and being known as a punster doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

It jarred Nimrod to think of the villagers as ‘them’, but there was no escaping the realization that he wasn’t really one of them anymore, and that he might also have to start cultivating (no pun intended, he thought with some amusement) a distant act with his former peers soon.

“How is it that you can heal me?” he asked to distract himself from the uncomfortable musings. “Shouldn’t my ability core be drawing the essence in to charge itself like it’s doing with the essence that my body was supposed to be using to heal itself?”

“Two reasons,” Irene said, still moving her hands and sending essence into his arm. “The core can’t absorb my technique because the essence is mine, and already shaped. The core is aligned to you, and can only use your own essence. Either the essence your body generates naturally, or the essence from your core. But you could still use a healing technique on yourself, if you knew one. The technique gives the essence a fixed shape, so it can’t just be absorbed.”

She stopped performing the technique, and let the green essence fog dissipate to reveal Nimrod’s perfectly healed arm.

“Don’t think this means you can use that insane ability of yours now. You were lucky you didn’t lose the arm entirely when you used it before, and your arm is still completely untempered. Using it again would be a bad idea. One might even call it Hare-brained.”

Chuckling at his groan, Irene left the room, and Nimrod wasted no time in heading to the courtyard.

Building his core up to tier three wasn’t any more difficult than to tier two, but he did notice that it took twice as much essence, while providing the same increase in essence capacity. If the pattern continued to the higher tiers, it’ll take him longer and longer to reach each new tier. Even longer once he started to use essence in training and fighting Beasts.

He’d also noticed that while his core was completely empty, he still had essence flowing through his meridians, and the reservoirs behind his upper lip, in his feet and in his left palm were all full, which meant that building up his core would not leave him defenseless.

Nimrod stayed in the courtyard, cultivating using the form Eleanor showed him the day before, until noon, managing to at least partially refill his core.

Eleanor was back from the forest for lunch, and Nimrod found to conversation to be very interesting, and more than a little alarming.

“I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet for watching over my village,” Irene said. “The summons from the Council of Five didn’t really give me the time to arrange a replacement.”

“They know that,” Eleanor replied. “I was sent here at the same time as the message, but, well, Metal Disciples aren’t known for their speed. The messenger bird was bound to reach you first.”

“I take it you know what the summons was about?”

“Naturally. And while I only had to fight one Beast in the week I was here, added to the wolf and Nimrod’s Hare, that’s three Beasts in as many weeks.”

“What are you two talking about?” Nimrod asked. “We’ve had more Beasts here than usual, but you seem to be talking about more than just that.”

“We’ve had more Beasts show up just about everywhere,” Eleanor said bluntly. “We’ve seen them show up in heavily populated areas that haven’t had a Beast attack in decades, and places like this village have seen more in the past month than they usually see in a year.”

“It’s why I was called away to speak to the Council,” Irene added. “They’re calling in reports from all over to get as accurate a picture as they can.”

“All of which is something you should keep to yourself, Nimrod. It’s our duty to protect the mundane people, but if they knew something was increasing Beast attacks, it’d cause a panic.”

“You don’t seem to be too shy about speaking in front of me about it.”

“You’re a Disciple now,” Eleanor shrugged. “You’ll be coming with me into the forest to help protect them starting tomorrow.”

“Yeah, Nimrod,” Irene grinned. “You’ve been attacked by a wolf and a bunny before, but you can’t let that stop you. Time for you to get some Hare of the dog that bit you!”

“You,” Eleanor said with a groan, “have not changed even a little bit since you’ve left the Hall.”

The conversation turned into the two reminiscing about their time in the Hall of Sages, learning the techniques and methods of cultivation, and the laws and history of the Disciples of the Five Paths, most of which went over Nimrods decidedly provincial head.