Legacy of the M'Zee Chapter 23

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

I got a new iPad stand and keyboard that is working better, and I got a bunch of writing on Legacy, so y'all get another chapter! Please see the previous post today for the second draft of Energy Barons, so y'all can make comments and check over my work.

Thanks!

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

The new room I entered was small, only three meters by three meters. The Aether in the room was thick and cloying, uncomfortably pushing on me from all sides. It distracted me enough that I almost walked into the table in the center of the room. A crystal ball thirty centimeters in diameter sat on a stand on the sturdy wooden table. Next to it was a message, carved into the table, stating ‘Channel your Aether into the crystal. The more you can channel, the better your rewards. Do not stop. You have until the sand runs out.’ Immediately after reading it, a large hourglass appeared, sand slowly tumbling down from the full top bulb.

I watched it for a few seconds, trying to estimate how long I had, then shrugged. “At least an hour,” I told myself, “probably more like four.” I looked closely at the crystal and saw a very faint outline of hands on either side. I reached up and put my hands where the indicator was. The last few millimeters of movement it felt like my hands were sucked to the surface of the ball. I concentrated and pushed Aether up from my center through my projection meridians, sending as much as I could. The rush surprised me, my meridians stronger and more flexible than ever. My meridians and center drained into the crystal.

As my Aether flowed into it, the ball seemed to fill with a blue-white light. After about thirty seconds, I’d drained ten percent of my total reserves, and the ball filled up. It flashed brightly twice, then dimmed again. The number one seemed to be floating in the center of the crystal. The ball started to fill up again as I kept the flow going. Okay, this will work for a little bit, but then I’ll be empty, I thought. Gotta gather at the same time. Maybe I should take a gathering powder? I tried to pull my hand off the ball, but couldn’t. Drat.

I split my focus, maintaining the flow but setting up the spirals for my Runic Spiral Gathering Technique. I hadn’t tried doing something like this before, so I took my time. My gathering meridians, at least, were helping, but I knew I’d have to slow down the Aether expulsion soon, or I’d risk running out. The ball flashed again, now reading ‘two’. At fifty percent, I’ll drop the flow until it equals my regeneration, I thought, then focused back on spirals.

I ended up having to slow the outflow to a tenth of what it was initially, giving myself more time to get the technique right. After finally finishing drawing each spiral, almost losing the technique four times as my mind wandered under the effort of splitting it, I was able to ramp up my projection, though it was still significantly less than before. With the spirals drawing in more Aether, I had to split my attention yet again to create the two sets of runes that made up the Runic part of the name of the technique.

A headache started to build as I drew, so I paused for a minute to direct more Aether into my life and brain meridians. The surge helped me focus, though it started to drain my center again. Got to get these right! I growled to myself, finishing the first set. Maintaining the runes was put into the same mental partition as the spirals, and my headache eased slightly as I let my subconscious maintain them, or something. This is weird, but it works, I laughed, then started to work on the outer set of runes.

The ball flashed then emptied again, filled seven times now. The inner runes had increased the speed I pulled in Aether, the excessive amount in the atmosphere around me helping significantly, which let me increase my output. The outer set took longer to get together, my mind straining to hold all of the different processes necessary to contain the Aether flowing through me. At least the spirals took care of aspecting the Aether to me, giving me better control of it.

I focused, each rune forming above my chest, each rune making my head hurt more. I refuse to give up, I thought. I’m going to send so much Aether through this crystal ball that Spirit won’t know what to do. I need to be stronger. I need to protect my friends and family. Stupid Illyrians and their war. Why are they, no focus. The last two runes came together, and Aether surged into me. So much so, that I struggled for a second to hold the Runic Spiral Gathering Technique together.

After adjusting to match my output into the ball to my input, I was filling the ball every fifty seconds or so. The count quickly went up, and I glanced to the side to check on the sand, and it was less than halfway empty. “Twenty six so far,” I told myself. “Those are rookie numbers. I got to pump that up. But how?”

I went over my gathering technique again. “Why are the runes positioned there?” I asked myself after a minute. “I never really thought of that. Centered over my chest makes it easier to control, but my gathering meridians go out my back. Switching the direction of the spirals shouldn’t be too bad.”

I slowed down the speed I was outputting Aether at, letting my reserves refill over the next half-hour. My projection meridians were starting to get sore, so I split the Aether flow out to include my blood vessel, arm, and skin meridians. This made it significantly more difficult to control, but it dropped the strain on my meridians significantly. Five more minutes of maintaining the flow let me get a better hold on the new output technique before I decided to move the gathering runes.

The Runic Spiral Gathering Technique fell apart with a small application of my will, and then I started the process of rebuilding it. It went swifter this time, at least for the spirals, and I was able to speed up my outflow again after only a minute. The inner runes, I didn’t change, and they were done in another minute. Practice makes permanent, and I practiced this already, I laughed, ignoring the feeling of tiredness that channeling Aether for this long was causing in me.

Okay, so the runes. If I just copy them but backwards, they’ll be centered just above my central gathering meridian. What if I mimicked the last two runes over each meridian? I think that’ll work, I thought. Let’s do it. I started to draw the runes, starting with the outermost. I extended the range by almost half a meter, giving me space to draw the other two sets.

The central two runes, over my middle gathering meridian, were easy, and seemed to fully activate the technique. By changing which side I was using, it increased my gathering speed by a few percent over what the technique did normally. Nice! This is something to keep doing.

I reached my mind out and started to draw the uppermost two runes. I finished the first one, which was fairly easy, but the second one burned. It felt like my mind was being pulled apart, the Aether trying to split but not at the same time. “Work, Light blind you!” I screamed, and finished the rune. The Aether flowing in divided, moving into my top two gathering meridians, and then merging again as the magical tattoo I’d gotten spread it around all three gathering meridians.

The initial three runes started to pull more in, the pressure differential due to the split adding extra force to the pull. Holding the two paths was hard, so much harder than normal. I didn’t try to add a third set, even though I had three gathering meridians. My mind, my spirit, was just not capable of maintaining that, yet. “Ow, ow, ow,” I chanted for a few minutes, distracting myself from the pain.

The other distraction was moving to forty-three seconds per fill from fifty. I looked over to see I was up to forty-seven fills. “I’m definitely going to beat everyone else,” I said. “Going to be the best there ever was. Gotta collect all the rewards, since Bond’s don’t work that way.” I giggled, my brain too tired to do anything but make bad pop-culture references from Earth.

Time seemed to fade after a bit, and all I could focus on was Aether flows, both in and out. The sand dropped, slowly ticking through my time. Finally, there was only a small amount of sand left. I focused, pushing more and more Aether out of me, determined to end the test with nothing left. Every second, every bit of sand, I increased how much I sent out of me. Finally, in the last few seconds, I blitzed out every last drop.

As the grains of sand dropped, the ball filled up and flashed. “One hundred ninety eight,” I said. “Darkness hide it, really!? So close to two hundred.”

Spirit appeared in front of me. “Remarkable,” they said. “Absolutely remarkable. You exceeded the test’s parameters by twenty three. The record prior to you was one hundred sixty seven.”

“Uh, thanks!” I said. “How’re the others doing?”

“You will find out later,” Spirit said. “Hmm, rewards. Normally, your reward would be gathering time with the room increased in Aether density. Instead, you will have three times as much time in the next trial, and the room’s Aether density will be increased to the current amount of this room. A timer will be set and visible to you.”

“May I ask what the next trial is?”

“You will be making a pill. Hmm, as a bonus, you will get twice as many ingredients. Yes, that should be sufficient. Good luck,” Spirit said before vanishing. The table and everything on it disappeared as well, leaving me alone in an empty room. Directly in front of me, a door shimmered into being.

I quickly moved to open it, ready to learn a new recipe and try to make a pill. Not that I’ve had significant success with pills, I thought, worried but determined to continue as best I could. The door opened easily, looking out into one of the black nothingnesses I’d seen before. With a shrug, I stepped into the portal.

The next room was a decent size, five meters square. To my left was a small alcove behind a bookshelf with a cot. On my right was another small alcove behind furniture, this time with a single chair and table. The table contained a spread of pastries and cheeses, awakening a massive hunger in me. Two jugs sat behind the food, with two glasses for me to pour into. With a shake of my head, I dismissed the feeling before looking into the rest of the room.

There were six work tables set across the far side of the room. Over two of them hung funnels and glass shields, making them look like ventilated hoods. A closer glance at the Inscriptions lining the funnels told me they were ventilated working areas. Flasks, beakers, burners, distillation equipment, titration equipment, dozens of pieces of measuring equipment, cauldrons, and three different mortar and pestle sets.

Stepping past the furniture that made the alcoves, I saw that one was a bookshelf containing four books. The other was a storage shelf, with over a hundred separate alcoves containing glass jars and bins of various plant and animal parts. A piece of paper was pinned to a small cork board near the bottom. I reached over and pulled it off.

“You will be creating a Harmonic Cycle Completion Pill. You will find the books provided helpful in the final creation of the pill. With your time increase, you have three days. Good luck, Spirit,” I read the directions aloud. Once finished, a massive sand clock appeared, reaching to the three meter ceiling of the room. Grains fell slowly, giving me my time limit.

“Okay, books first, then food,” I told myself. “Eat and read.” I looked at the titles, finding that they had been translated into Craesti for me. Basics of Pill Formation, might be able to skip that one. Advanced Pills for Foundation Refinement (Condensation), huh, I guess they didn’t call it Condensation? Did Spirit add the parenthetical to that title for me? Nice! Probably where the Cycle Completion Pill is detailed. Flora and Fauna of the M’Zee Trial Realm, well, that’ll be useful for materials if I need it. A Guide to Alchemical Equipment, again probably not needed, but useful anyway. I’ve got time to reference things if necessary.

I reached over and pulled off the Advanced Pills book, carrying it with me to the chair. I carefully arranged a place on the table for the book, then made a plate of pastries. The first one he grabbed was fluffy with a raspberry jam on top. Iate it quickly, too hungry to really notice the flavor. After that one, I found a few that had meat and cheese in them, similar to pigs-in-a-blanket from back on Earth. “Mmm, so good,” I moaned around the cheese.

The food was chock full of Aether, processed and cooked in such a way that what was originally in the ingredients was amplified and purified. High level cooks were similar to alchemists in their ability to enhance a person’s gathering level. I could feel the Aether flowing into me, from my stomach to my center then out into my meridians before soaking into my flesh, further empowering my body and advancing me. It was the tiniest amount, minutes worth of gathering at best, but anything was better than nothing.

Heh, plus, if I eat the whole plate, that counts as gathering for a few hours, I laughed to myself. I took my time on the third pastry, another savory one, eating it one handed after scouring my left with Aether to remove any grease before touching the book. The first page was a note informing me that I should have mastered six powder, six potion, and three pill recipes before trying the ones in this book. “Never heard of those,” I told it, “but I’ll keep that in mind. Ooh, Initial Core Formation Catalyst Pill. That’ll be useful soonish, though I have no idea what most of those ingredients are. Crap, gonna need the Flora book. First, find the recipe.”

It was the fourth recipe. “Harmonic Cycle Completion Pill, here we go. Used to assist with pushing people through Foundation Completion, which is probably Circulation Completion. Depending on quality, Affinity, talent, and strength of Foundation, may advance someone up to twenty percent of the way through. Light and Darkness, that’s awesome. Okay, list of ingredients. No idea what they are. Good thing the boxes on the other side of the shelf here,” I knocked on it lightly, “are labeled.”

I kept reading, absentmindedly grabbing another pastry. “So I need to dehydrate the Nne’Pembe’Paa Bile with the Dalila Aether Control Method, yup, going to need the Basics of Pill Formation Book too. That’ll show me for being dismissive. Well, after that, mash up a few ingredients, mix with Beast blood, then use the Thimba Combination Technique, then set it aside. Dissolve three different pollens into Mbuzi’simb’joka poison.”

I realized after a second that I was subconsciously resisting the translation ability that Darkness had imbued me with. “Manticore, that last one is the manticore we fought. Using its poison, really? Oh, here we go, three steps later and we use the Safia Purification Technique. Pure purification? Probably a name then. Fitting, I guess. The technique removes the poison after it has affected the pollens, some sap, and dissolved a Fuzhu, or Four Horned Antelope, Nne’Pembe’Paa. There’s no way I said that right.”

The recipe took up four full pages, with a total of eight referenced techniques for manipulating the materials used in the pill. It was by far the most complex recipe I’d ever seen, but the reported capabilities of the pill matched the difficulty in making it. Of course, the earlier pills’ recipes were just as long, but I didn’t read them in their entirety, so they don’t count. I went to take another bite, only to find my hand empty. I looked over and started to laugh, I ate it all without paying attention. Alright, book away, get a drink, then start to catalog where the ingredients are. I got up and carried the book to the central worktable, where two mortar and pestle sets waited on either side of a large pill cauldron. Gently, I set the book down, then walked back to the food table. I looked in the two jugs, finding one to be water and the other juice of some kind. A sniff told me it wasn’t alcoholic, so I poured a glass. Drinking a small sip made me realize it was raspberry juice, combined from all of the Elements we’d found and sampled. That’s probably the only reason I didn’t explode upon drinking, as the juice seemed to concentrate the effects of the berries, driving them to a new extent. “Light!” I groaned, bending over as pain rocketed from my stomach to my center. From there, it spread over my entire body. Luckily, the pain passed quickly. “Well, I guess I have to drink all of that, but slowly.”

A few more sips were all I could take for now, then a full cup of water quenched the rest of my thirst. I noticed that small traces of impurities were forced out of my skin, leaving tiny, black, oily spots on my forearm. I looked to the side to find the door that I’d entered had changed without my noticing. Opening it revealed a bathroom complete with both a shower and a bathtub. “Nice, fancy five-piece, would fit in any new build suburban home.” I laughed. “Alright, I don’t have infinite time here, so let’s scrub quickly and get ready to work.”

Five minutes later, I pulled the chair from the dining table to sit next to the equipment and the ‘Basics of Pill Formation’ book was open in front of me. I skimmed the first dozen pages, seeing different bits taught to me by Librarian Narwan or Counselor Sila. Finally, the third chapter discussed the Dalila Aether Control Method, which was fairly simple. When used to dehydrate objects, the method showed me a way of turning Air Aether into Water Aether and then moving my Aether into the target. There I would have to reverse the Aether change while slowly drawing my Aether, pulling with it the water of the bile, in this case. A suggestion to practice the technique was to add some salt to a small amount of water and then soak a cloth with it. With a shrug, I got up and found a small washcloth. A glance at the water jug showed it had fully refilled from my earlier drink. The juice didn’t, though, letting me know it was probably limited in volume. Hopefully I can finish it by the end of the timer, I thought. It’ll make me stronger too.

I mixed a tiny portion of salt, found in the storage shelf, into the cup, and then dunked the sleeve of a shirt into it. After the soaking, I laid it flat and summoned my Aether. Creating the initial layer of Air Aether was simplicity itself, but then changing it to Water was described as turning it. I had some experience converting Aether, but only inside my center. Doing it outside my body, and in the way described, was not easy. It did make me think of quantum mechanics and spin, though, which made me wish I’d spent more time learning it so long ago. All I really remember from quantum is that everything is a wave and a particle, and quantum effects are weird, I laughed softly to myself. Finally, after a few minutes of attempts, I got it to work. Immediately, the amount of Aether I had in my control dropped to one fourth the initial value, but it became Water instead of Air.

My control shook, and I lost it, letting the Aether dissipate into the air. Thankfully, the density of Aether in the room was as promised, and I was full again within seconds. It took me three more tries, ten total minutes, to get the change to occur and maintain control of the Aether afterwards. The shimmering curtain of Water Aether hung just a centimeter above my slowly drying shirt. With a thought and a gesture, the Aether sunk into it, then I slowly pulled it back out, turning the Aether back into Air by simply reversing the spin change. This time, I only lost half the Aether, as the wetness of the shirt provided some of the impetus to change. After another minute, the shirt was dry with a slight coating of salt on the sleeve to show that he’d kept the important part inside. “Yes!” I shouted, pumping my fist over my head. “Okay, three more times, then onto the next technique.”